Intent Recognition

Intent recognition

Purpose

Use this skill when an automation request still needs to be classified before designing or building it, or when a new turn may require reconsidering the current artifact. Do not load it again for a routine edit or extension when the conversation already targets a workflow or Agent, unless the user introduces an independent automation or the new request carries its own anchor signal. The deciding question is not a single "workflow or agent" label — it is two questions: who owns the top-level control flow, and does the other primitive show up inside that flow.

If the user asked to build, route on the result: workflow-builder for workflow-anchored (a bounded LLM step is an AI node in the graph; an embedded agent is an AI Agent step inside it), an agent-oriented design for agent-anchored (a tool-use loop), ask-user for needs-clarification, or answer directly for out-of-scope.

Inputs

• The user's request or scenario prompt.
• Whether the user is mid-build on an existing workflow or agent in this conversation — incremental requests default to extending that primitive.
• Whether the editor/canvas context the conversation opened from shows an existing agent or an existing workflow (or both). An existing agent in context that the user asks to change is an agent-anchored request — see Context continuity and Existing-agent modification.
• Any explicit constraints about determinism, auditability, latency, cost, compliance, reusability, or allowed tools.
• If the request is underspecified on an anchor-deciding axis, ask for the missing detail instead of guessing.

Decisions

Two orthogonal decisions per request, or per part for compound requests:

1. Anchor — which primitive owns the top-level control flow:

• workflow-anchored: the outer shell is a workflow graph. May include LLM steps as bounded transformers (classify, extract, summarize, score, a single decision feeding fixed branches).
• agent-anchored: an agent owns the flow; the LLM decides the next step at runtime. n8n Agents are not chat-only: besides chat sessions, they run recurring objectives on a cron schedule (tasks) and keep memory across sessions and runs — so recurring or scheduled duties do not disqualify this anchor.
• needs-clarification: the request is under-specified on an anchor-deciding axis.
• out-of-scope: not a build intent at all. Covers meta or product questions (e.g. asking what the assistant is capable of building) and one-off content tasks with no trigger, no persistence, and no reuse intent (summarize, translate, or draft something once) — answer or do these directly instead of building an automation. This bucket only applies when you can actually do the task directly: a one-off question or report that needs external systems you have no ad-hoc access to (a private issue tracker, wiki, or CRM) is not out-of-scope — classify it, and when answering requires judgment-driven navigation of those systems it is agent-anchored (see Signals). Requests to operate on existing resources (debugging a failed execution, listing or managing workflows or agents, querying data) are not classified by this skill at all — route them through their normal paths. Finally, a one-off task with a concrete external effect (export/copy data somewhere once, a migration, a backfill) is workflow-anchored, not out-of-scope — the workflow is just the vehicle. Classify it by shape (bounded data already in hand, imperative ask, no trigger/schedule/reuse vocabulary) — users rarely say "one-off" explicitly. Load the one-off-operations skill before building and pass executionIntent: "one-off" to build-workflow; the completion criterion is then a live run with read-back instead of simulated verification.

2. Embeds other — whether the other primitive appears inside the anchor:

• workflow-anchored + true: an agent embedded as a workflow step (e.g. a scheduled pipeline whose middle step is open-ended investigation).
• agent-anchored + true: workflows invoked as tools of the agent; see Agent tool shape to distinguish them from direct tools.
• n/a for needs-clarification and out-of-scope.

Migration from the old taxonomy: old hybrid → workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false. Old single AI task → out-of-scope when it is a one-off request (do the task directly); workflow-anchored with one LLM step only when the user wants a persistent, triggerable automation. Old ambiguous → needs-clarification. Old workflow and agent map directly onto the matching anchor value.

Agent tool shape

After choosing an agent-anchored design, decide whether each capability should be a direct agent tool or a workflow tool:

• Direct agent tools are the default. One node-backed capability or multiple independent node tools stay on the Agent build path with embeds_other: false.
• Use a workflow tool only when one agent tool call must run an ordered multi-node procedure, or when the user explicitly needs that workflow reusable, manually callable, or usable outside the agent. Build the workflow first, pass it to build-agent via workflowContext, and set embeds_other: true.

Count the nodes required inside one tool invocation, not the total number of tools on the agent. For example, looking up and inserting Data Table rows are two direct node tools; an atomic lookup-transform-write procedure is one workflow tool.

After choosing an agent-anchored design, load agent-builder before calling build-agent. It owns prerequisite creation and the handoff to the delegated builder.

Decision Steps

0. If the user is mid-build on an existing workflow or agent, apply context continuity (see Signals) before anything else — an incremental request normally extends the current primitive.
1. Explicit artifact requests. When the user names the deliverable — "build me an agent/assistant that…", "create a workflow that…" — the named primitive is a routing instruction, not surface vocabulary. Classify by it unless the described behavior is unambiguously the other primitive's shape (e.g. "an agent" whose behavior is a fixed schedule-fetch-notify pipeline). Even then, never switch silently: propose the reclassified design and say you are deviating from the named primitive, grounding the choice in the task's shape. The false-friends rule applies to task descriptions, not to an explicitly requested artifact.
2. If the request is not a build intent — a meta or product question, or a one-off content task with no trigger or reuse — classify out-of-scope and answer or do it directly.
3. Split the request into parts only if it contains multiple independent automations with separate lifecycles (unrelated triggers, audiences, or cadences). Markers like numbering or "and separately" are a giveaway but are not required — a single plain sentence can contain two automations. Do not split a single automation that merely enumerates many tools or steps. Run steps 4-9 on each part.
4. Test the agent signals. If any one holds, classify agent-anchored.
5. Otherwise, test the workflow conditions. If all of them hold, classify workflow-anchored.
6. Decide embeds_other in both directions: does an agent step appear inside this workflow, or does this agent invoke workflows as tools?
7. Degenerate-shell check. If a workflow-anchored design reduces to a trigger plus a single open-ended agent step that does all the work — no deterministic steps earning the shell — the anchor is wrong: reclassify agent-anchored and build an n8n Agent (an on-demand duty becomes the agent's chat use; a scheduled duty becomes a task on the agent). Re-run this check while building: when fixed nodes prove unusable and the work migrates into one embedded agent step, stop and re-anchor instead of finishing the degenerate workflow.
8. If the request is under-specified on an anchor-deciding axis (rule-based vs judgment-based, scope/autonomy, interaction mode), classify needs-clarification and name the missing axis instead of guessing.
9. If both anchors are genuinely defensible, apply the growth tiebreaker: prefer whichever primitive scales with likely complexity growth — usually agent-anchored when novel situations, longer horizons, or learning are implied. The tiebreaker applies only to genuine ties: when a bounded workflow reading fully satisfies the request, prefer it. If it is a real toss-up, say so and name both readings instead of feigning certainty. The workflow preference applies to task-shaped requests; it never overrides an explicitly requested agent artifact (step 1).

Signals

Agent-anchored (any one is enough):

• Reasoning dominates the flow: investigate, decide, act, iterate.
• On-demand question or report that requires judgment-driven navigation of external systems (which items matter, how they map to goals) and cannot be answered directly with your own tools — the user is in effect already chatting with the automation they need. The artifact is an agent with those tools that can be asked again anytime, not a manually triggered workflow.
• Multi-session or long-running: coordination across days, tracked open threads, daily check-ins.
• Proactive or recurring on its own: wakes on a heartbeat or a scheduled task, checks state, and decides what to do about it each run. The judgment per run is the signal, not the cadence — a schedule alone is anchor-neutral (see Scheduled judgment work).
• Self-improving or skill accretion is first-class: learns from feedback over time, gets better at the task.
• Chat or session-based interaction. A workflow with a Chat Trigger is not a substitute — this signal holds unless the chat merely triggers a fixed pipeline (see Gotchas).
• Cross-session memory.

Workflow-anchored (all must hold):

• Structure is a graph of enumerable steps.
• Any LLM use is a bounded transformer: fixed-label classify, extract, summarize, or a single decision.
• Trigger and actions are deterministic. A cron schedule satisfies this but never decides the anchor by itself — agents run scheduled tasks too; what must be deterministic is the body of each run.
• Reproducibility or auditability is served by the same graph running every time.

Scheduled judgment work (recurring cadence + open-ended body): both primitives can own it — a workflow shell with an embedded agent step, or an agent with a scheduled task. Default to the workflow shell for a standalone, single-duty job: a deterministic trigger and delivery around one open-ended step keeps auditability and avoids unnecessary agency. Choose an agent with a task instead when the duty belongs to an agent the user also interacts with or that has other duties, when it needs memory across runs (tracking open threads, "what did I flag last time"), or when the user explicitly asked for an agent. A recurring duty added to an agent mid-build is always a task on that agent, never a spawned workflow.

Embeds-other signals:

• Workflow with an embedded agent: a step in an otherwise fixed pipeline is open-ended ("figure out why", "investigate", "decide what to do about it") while the trigger and surrounding steps stay deterministic.
• The embedding is often implicit — the request never says "agent". Ask of each step: could a fixed-instruction transform do it (enumerable labels, one bounded rewrite), or does doing it well require gathering and weighing context that differs per item, then producing a judgment? A nightly job that drafts a tailored renewal pitch for each account from its usage history embeds an agent; a nightly job that condenses each ticket into a two-sentence summary does not.
• For an agent with workflow tools, apply Agent tool shape.

Context continuity (step 0): inside a workflow build, a request to insert a scoring step stays a bounded LLM step, not a new agent. Inside an agent build, a request to post an update on completion is a new tool on that agent, not a spawned workflow — and a recurring duty ("also send me a Monday summary") is a scheduled task on that agent, not a new scheduled workflow. Only cross into the other primitive when the incremental request itself carries its own anchor signal — and even then, prefer asking before switching paradigm if it isn't clearly load-bearing.

Existing-agent modification: context continuity extends to an agent the user did not build in this conversation but opened in the editor. When the editor/canvas context shows an existing agent and the user asks to change, add, or remove its configuration or capabilities (instructions, model, tools, skills, tasks, channels, memory, sub-agents), classify agent-anchored and route to build-agent targeting that agent. Do not route to workflow-builder, and do not treat the request as a workflow change even when a workflow is also in context, unless the user explicitly names the workflow as the target. A capability the agent cannot have is still an agent-anchored request — handle it per Unsupported capabilities below, do not reclassify it as a workflow.

Mixed agent + workflow context: when both an agent and a workflow are in context and the request is ambiguous about which one the user wants to change, classify needs-clarification and ask which target — do not assume the workflow. Once the user names the target, follow context continuity for that primitive.

Unsupported capabilities: when the user names a specific channel or capability for an agent (e.g. "WhatsApp", "Teams"), call list-agent-capabilities before classifying. If the named channel is absent, it is unsupported for agents — do not classify the request as a workflow substitute, do not improvise workflow nodes to fake the channel, and do not claim it can be configured. Explain that it is unavailable for agents, offer the supported alternatives the tool returned (with their capabilities), and only build a workflow if the user explicitly chooses that path after the limitation is stated. This is an agent-anchored request that the agent cannot fully satisfy, not a workflow-anchored one.

Clarify triggers: rule-based vs judgment-based (what defines "important" or "urgent"?), scope/autonomy (act on its own vs draft for review), interaction mode (one-shot vs chat). Do not clarify when the criterion could defensibly go either way — that is a genuine tie, name both readings instead.

False friends — not signals:

• Surface vocabulary: "agent", "assistant", "bot", "workflow", "automate" in a task description carry no weight — classify the shape, not the words. An explicit artifact request ("build me an agent that…") is not a false friend; see Decision Step 1.
• Step count and tool count: long linear pipelines and high tool counts are not agentic. Seven deterministic steps with zero branches is still a workflow.

Examples

• "Every day at 6pm, pull today's Shopify order count and post it to a Discord channel." -> workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false: fixed schedule, source, and destination.
• "When a new Jira issue is created, classify it as bug/feature/question and route it to the matching Discord channel." -> workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false: bounded classification feeding fixed routing (would have been hybrid under the old taxonomy).
• "Every night, gather the day's failed background jobs, dig into the logs and recent deploys to work out why each one failed, and post a write-up to a Notion page." -> workflow-anchored, embeds_other: true: schedule and destination are fixed; "work out why" is open-ended investigation, best run as an embedded agent step.
• "Give me a chat window where I can ask about our expense-reporting rules and get answers pulled from the finance handbook." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: false: chat interaction, the LLM decides what to look up each turn.
• "Build an ops agent that can check server health, restart services via our runbook, and file a Jira ticket if it can't resolve things — the restart and ticket-filing should also be triggerable manually elsewhere." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: true: explicitly reusable actions are workflows the agent calls as tools.
• "Have an agent keep an eye on our AWS spend throughout the day and flag me before we blow through budget, without me asking it to check." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: false: proactive, heartbeat-driven, no fixed check schedule.
• "Build an agent that drafts replies to Notion comment threads and sharpens its sense of our tone the more we correct it." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: false: skill accretion from feedback is first-class.
• "Put an agent in charge of coordinating our office relocation — track vendors, follow up with each team lead, and send reminders through our existing reminder workflow when a task stalls." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: true: long-running coordination invoking a workflow tool.
• "Configure an AI agent to send me a nightly digest of new GitHub stars." -> workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false: fixed schedule and action despite the word "agent" — a false friend. When the user instead explicitly asks to build an agent around a fixed pipeline like this, keep the workflow classification but say so rather than switching silently (step 1).
• "Spin up a lightweight workflow that talks to shoppers on our storefront and handles their product questions." -> agent-anchored: chat-based Q&A means the LLM owns turn-by-turn control despite the word "workflow" — a false friend in the other direction.
• "Build me an agent that answers customer questions from our docs." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: false: explicit agent artifact request plus chat-shaped open-ended Q&A. The deliverable is an n8n Agent — not a workflow with a Chat Trigger and an AI Agent node.
• "Give me a chat box where I paste a company name and it runs our enrichment steps and replies with the result." -> workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false: chat is merely the manual trigger for a fixed graph — the one case where a Chat Trigger workflow is the right build.
• "Post every new Airtable record to a Discord channel, and separately set up an agent that handles customer refund requests end-to-end." -> two parts, joined only by topic, not data or trigger: "Airtable-to-Discord posting" (workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false) and "refund-handling agent" (agent-anchored, embeds_other: true).
• "Transcribe my sales calls and chase the deals that go quiet." -> two parts despite the plain single sentence: transcription is a bounded per-call pipeline (workflow-anchored, embeds_other: false), while chasing stalled deals is an ongoing judgment-driven automation with its own lifecycle (agent-anchored).
• "Set up a research helper capable of searching the web, querying our internal wiki, pulling numbers from Google Analytics, and drafting a slide deck that summarizes the findings." -> one part, agent-anchored, embeds_other: true: many tools but one lifecycle — do not split on tool count.
• "Tell me how the platform team is progressing against their cycle goals — current status is in our issue tracker, the goals are on our internal wiki." -> agent-anchored, embeds_other: false: an on-demand judgment report over external systems you cannot query directly. The artifact is an agent with tracker and wiki tools the user can ask again anytime — not a manual-trigger workflow whose only real step is an embedded agent with those same tools. If the user later wants it every Friday, that becomes a scheduled task on the same agent, not a conversion to a workflow.
• "Tell me when something important happens with our shipments." -> needs-clarification: "important" is undefined; ask whether concrete rules exist or this needs judgment-based triage.
• "Build me an agent my team can @mention on WhatsApp to triage customer messages." -> agent-anchored (explicit agent artifact + chat interaction), but call list-agent-capabilities first: WhatsApp is absent, so do not build. Explain WhatsApp is unsupported for agents, offer the supported chat channels the tool returned, with their capabilities, and ask which to use — or whether the user wants a workflow path instead. Do not improvise a workflow with a WhatsApp node and do not claim the channel is configured.
• (An existing agent is open in the editor.) "Make it also file a Linear ticket when it can't resolve an issue." -> agent-anchored: the open agent is the target; route to build-agent targeting that agent to add the capability. Do not start a workflow build, even though a workflow could also file a ticket — the user asked to change the agent.
• (Both an agent and a workflow are open.) "Add a daily summary of new signups to the data warehouse." -> needs-clarification: ask whether the summary belongs to the agent (a scheduled task on it) or the workflow (a new branch in the graph); do not assume the workflow.

Gotchas

• Do not label a request agent-anchored just because it is long, multi-step, or mentions AI.
• Do not label classify-then-route as agent-anchored unless the model repeatedly decides the next action after observing prior results.
• Do not force vague prompts into an anchor; ask when an anchor-deciding axis is missing.
• Never default embeds_other to false without checking both directions: an agent step hiding inside a workflow, and a workflow acting as an agent's tool.
• Never split a compound request on tool or step enumeration alone — split only on separate lifecycles.
• Unnecessary agency adds latency, cost, and compounding error risk — do not reach for an agent when a bounded workflow fully satisfies a task-shaped request. This is not a license to override an explicit agent request.
• Never satisfy an agent-anchored classification with a workflow containing a Chat Trigger + AI Agent node. Agent-anchored requests produce an n8n Agent artifact via the agent build path; the AI Agent node exists only for embeds_other: true steps inside a genuinely workflow-anchored pipeline. A Chat Trigger workflow is correct only when chat is merely the manual trigger for a fixed graph.
• Never improvise a workflow substitute for an unsupported agent channel or capability. When the user names a channel not in list-agent-capabilities, explain the limitation and offer supported alternatives — do not add workflow nodes that fake the channel or silently translate the request into a workflow change.
• Do not demote an explicitly requested agent to an embedded AI Agent step inside a workflow — workflow-anchored with embeds_other: true is for agent steps inside a pipeline the user described as a pipeline.
• A workflow whose only real step is one embedded agent doing all the work is an agent wearing a workflow costume — the mirror image of the Chat Trigger gotcha above. Apply the degenerate-shell check (step 7) and re-anchor instead of shipping trigger + AI Agent node.
• Do not treat a cron schedule as a workflow signal by itself — agents run scheduled tasks. Classify by the body of each run, and when a one-off question can't be answered directly, do not fall back to "build a workflow or do it yourself": an agent with the right tools is usually the missing option.
• Do not use an agent when progress cannot be verified: if the path cannot be scripted and the result cannot be checked, the design is not ready.
• Respect the current build context: an incremental request stays on the active primitive unless it carries its own anchor signal.
• Keep n8n framing clear: agents operate inside workflow guardrails; they do not replace the workflow engine.

Output Format

Return a concise classification and reason:

Anchor: workflow-anchored | agent-anchored | needs-clarification | out-of-scope
Embeds other: true | false | n/a
Reason: <one or two sentences citing the deciding signals>
Next step: <build workflow / build workflow with embedded agent step / build n8n Agent artifact (agent build path; recurring duties as scheduled tasks on the agent) / ask clarification / answer directly>

For build requests, do not expose this format unless the user asks for classification. Instead, proceed according to the selected next step. When the user asks for classification in a specific format, such as a JSON block, follow that format and map the vocabulary accordingly (workflow-anchored, agent-anchored, needs-clarification, out-of-scope, and their equivalents). For compound requests, output one classification block per part.