# Workflow Design

> Fires when a fellow needs to coordinate MORE THAN ONE agent to get the work done — "design the workflow", "orchestrate the agents", "set up the fleet", "how do the agents work together", "which agents do I need and when do they spawn", "multi-agent setup". Returns a workflow + fleet map: the multi-step orchestration, a spawn-by-rule fleet (researcher, analyst, prototyper, drafter, critic) each with an observable spawn trigger, and a Think/Build/Admin surface assignment (Claude.ai / Claude Code / Cowork), then kills a single-agent design where a fleet is needed and any spawn rule with no trigger. Do NOT fire to spec ONE agent's role/tools/memory (use agent-design), to design the product's internal request-time pipeline of input→router→reason→validate (use compound-system-architecture), or to write the pass/fail eval (use eval-first-spec).

- Skill: `the-utopia-studio/workflow-design` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 13 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add the-utopia-studio/workflow-design`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/the-utopia-studio/workflow-design/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: DevOps & Infra
- Author: The-Utopia-Studio (https://skillmd.com/u/the-utopia-studio)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/the-utopia-studio/workflow-design

---


# Workflow-Design

## What it does

Turns "I'll spin up some agents" into a directed workflow of specialised agents, each
summoned by a rule and dismissed by a rule, run across the three surfaces where the work
actually belongs. The fellow describes the work; the skill first checks whether a fleet is
even warranted, then lays out the multi-step orchestration, assigns the spawn-by-rule fleet
(researcher / analyst / prototyper / drafter / critic — a menu, not a requirement), wires
each agent to an observable spawn trigger and a done condition, and puts every step on the
right surface: Think in Claude.ai, Build in Claude Code, Admin in Cowork. It refuses the two
things fellows reach for: a lone agent doing work that needs a fleet, and a "fleet" that is
really five chat windows with no triggers.

## The Icarus reframe

A workflow is not a chat thread and a fleet is not a tab bar. It is a directed graph of
agents where each agent is spawned by a **rule you could write as an if-condition**, not by
the fellow remembering to open a new window. The unit of design is the spawn trigger — the
observable event that summons an agent and the done signal that dismisses it. The five
archetypes divide labour by **cognitive mode** (gather, structure, make tangible, compose,
falsify), not by topic; you never spawn "the marketing agent", you spawn the critic because
a draft crossed the review threshold. And the critic must be a different agent from the
drafter for the same reason a validator is never the model that wrote the output: nothing
critiques its own work. The three surfaces are three modes, not three logos — diverge in
Claude.ai, build deterministically and repo-grounded in Claude Code, schedule and monitor
the running fleet in Cowork — and putting a step on the wrong surface is the commonest waste
in the whole build.

## When to use / When NOT

Use when: the work has independent sub-tasks that can run in parallel, or a role conflict
that one head cannot hold (drafting and critiquing at once), or depth that overruns a single
context; and the question is now how the agents coordinate and when each one fires.

| Not this skill | Use instead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Spec one agent — its role, tools, and memory layer" | `agent-design` | That designs a single agent's guts. This coordinates several. If the honest answer is one agent, route there — a fleet for solo work is theatre. |
| "Design the product's system: input → router → retrieve → reason → validate → output" | `compound-system-architecture` | That is the product's internal request-time pipeline — how a user request is processed. This is the fellow's build/operate fleet — the agents that do the WORK, with a different lifetime and graph. |
| "Write the golden cases and the acceptable failure rate" | `eval-first-spec` | That is the scoreable contract. The critic here runs against those cases; it does not write them. |
| "Make the UI / craft the interface" | `impeccable`, `design/*` | Route the prototyper's craft there. Do not restate a design skill inside the fleet map. |

If the input is a bare one-liner with no work named ("set up some agents for my startup"),
do not invent a fleet. Ask the one question that unblocks it — what work needs doing, and
what artefact does it produce? — or return the smallest honest next step.

## Method

Copy this checklist:

```
Workflow-Design progress:
- [ ] Step 0: Fleet-or-solo gate — does this even need more than one agent?
- [ ] Step 1: State the one-sentence workflow job
- [ ] Step 2: Map the multi-step workflow (each step: owner, artefact, gate)
- [ ] Step 3: Assign the fleet — pick the archetypes actually needed
- [ ] Step 4: Wire every spawn trigger as an observable event + done signal
- [ ] Step 5: Assign each step a surface (Think / Build / Admin) and say why
- [ ] Step 6: Critic-independence check
- [ ] Step 7: Run the kill line before returning
```

**Step 0 — fleet-or-solo gate.** Before designing a fleet, prove one is needed. Score the
three tests; a fleet is warranted only if at least one is a hard yes.

| Test | Question | Yes means |
|---|---|---|
| Parallelism | Are there ≥2 sub-tasks that could run at the same time with no shared state? | fan-out pays |
| Role conflict | Does one agent have to both produce and judge the same artefact? | split drafter/critic |
| Context depth | Does the whole job overrun one agent's usable context or memory? | decompose |

If all three are no, the answer is one agent. Say so, route to `agent-design`, and stop. Do
not build a fleet to look busy.

**Step 1 — the workflow job.** One sentence: what work the whole fleet turns into what
artefact, for whom. Not a list of agents. If it needs "and" three times, it is more than one
workflow.

**Step 2 — the multi-step workflow.** Fill the step table in [template.md](template.md).
Every step names its input, its owner agent, the artefact it emits, and the gate that must
pass before the next step starts. A step with no output artefact is a meeting, not a step.

**Step 3 — assign the fleet.** The five archetypes are a menu. Use the ones the work needs;
mark the rest "n/a — not needed, why". Each is a cognitive mode, not a topic.

| Agent | Cognitive mode | Spawns when | Done when | Hands off to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Researcher | Gather + source | a claim is tagged `[Assumption]`/`[Hypothesis]` with no source | claim is sourced or demoted | Analyst |
| Analyst | Structure + quantify | raw facts need a model, a number, or a decision | the number is built with the arithmetic shown | Drafter / Critic |
| Prototyper | Make tangible | a concept needs a concrete thing to react to | a paper/clickable artefact exists | Critic / user |
| Drafter | Compose | a decision or spec must become an artefact | the artefact is complete against its template | Critic |
| Critic | Falsify | a draft/artefact crosses the review threshold | verdict: pass, or a named defect list | Drafter (loop) / human |

**Step 4 — wire the spawn triggers.** This is the core of the skill. Every trigger has three
parts: an observable EVENT, a CONDITION/threshold, and a DONE signal. "When we need research"
is not a trigger — it is a wish. Fill the wiring table and score each trigger on the ladder:
a trigger you can point at an artefact state for is at least 0.5; a vibes trigger is 0.1 and
fails. Every loop (critic → drafter) needs an exit: a max-iteration count or an escalate-to-
human condition, or it spins forever.

**Step 5 — assign surfaces.** Pick the surface by the mode of the step, not by habit.

| Surface | Mode | Belongs here |
|---|---|---|
| Think — Claude.ai | Diverge, explore, no-tools reasoning | researcher's gather, analyst's framing, invention, first concepts |
| Build — Claude Code | Deterministic, repo-grounded, tooled | prototyper's clickable, drafter's spec-against-repo, the eval harness, anything touching files |
| Admin — Cowork | Schedule, fan-out, monitor the running fleet | recurring triggers, parallel dispatch, watching the fleet, hand-back to human |

**Step 6 — critic-independence check.** The critic is a separate agent from the drafter. If
the same agent drafts and critiques, the critic does not exist and quality is self-graded.

**Step 7 — the kill line.** Run the self-check at the foot of [template.md](template.md).

## Evidence standard

Money moved 1.0 → behaviour observed 0.7 → artefact shown 0.5 → verbal commitment 0.3 →
opinion 0.1. Here the ladder scores the **spawn triggers**, because that is where a fleet is
either a machine or a mood board. A trigger tied to opinion ("spawn the researcher when it
feels stuck", 0.1) fails; a trigger tied to an observable artefact state ("the draft holds an
unsourced `[Assumption]`", 0.5) passes; the bar to aim for is behaviour (0.7) — the fleet has
run once and the handoff artefacts actually appeared. The two bars are not in tension: 0.5 is the
design-time pass bar every trigger must clear (a trigger can only be pointed at an artefact state
before the fleet has run), and 0.7 is the post-run read of a fleet that has actually executed — so
do not dock a valid 0.5 design-time trigger for not yet reaching 0.7. The critic's verdict is held to the same
ladder: "looks good" is opinion 0.1 and does not close a review; a verdict must cite the
artefact or eval result it checked. Tag every empirical claim about volume, cadence, or cost
`[Fact]`, `[Assumption]`, or `[Hypothesis]`. A workflow is done when every trigger reads as an
if-condition, not a hope.

## Gotchas

- **The tab-switching fleet.** Five agents with no triggers is five chat windows you switch
  between by hand. If the fellow has to remember to spawn an agent, it is a to-do list, not a
  fleet. The tell: a fleet table with a roster but a blank or vibes trigger column.
- **The self-critiquing drafter.** The same agent that writes the draft also "checks it". That
  is the fleet-level disappearing guardrail — the critic is decoration and quality is self-
  graded. Split them, or admit there is no review.
- **Over-orchestration.** A fleet for work one agent could do in one context is the more common
  failure than under-orchestration, and it is more expensive. If Step 0 shows no parallelism,
  no role conflict, and no depth problem, a fleet is theatre; route to `agent-design`.
- **Wrong surface.** Divergent thinking pushed into Claude Code (slow, over-tooled) or a repo
  build attempted in Claude.ai (no files, no ground truth). Cheap to fix once named, expensive
  to leave. Match surface to mode.
- **Loops with no exit.** A critic → drafter loop with no max-iteration or escalate condition
  runs until someone notices. Every loop names its exit.

## Examples

[examples/sample.md](examples/sample.md) — Barrier Intelligence's discovery-to-v1 build run
as a spawn-by-rule fleet: researcher mines rig field logs and permit data, analyst quantifies
near-miss base rates, prototyper builds a paper alert card, drafter writes the alert-rule spec,
and an independent critic falsifies each rule against known incidents — with every spawn trigger
written as an observable event and the surface split (Think / Build / Admin) called for each step.

## Related skills

- `agent-design` — designs a single agent's role, tools, memory layer, and eval. This skill
  coordinates several such agents; each node in this fleet is one `agent-design` output. When
  Step 0 returns solo, hand the whole thing there.
- `compound-system-architecture` — the product's internal request-time pipeline (input →
  router → retrieve/reason/act → validate → output). That graph runs inside the shipped product
  per user request; this graph is the fellow's build/operate fleet with a different lifetime.
  Do not conflate the two routers.
- `eval-first-spec` — the golden cases the critic runs against. This skill spawns the critic;
  that skill writes what the critic checks.
- `impeccable`, `design/*` — where the prototyper's UI craft is done. Route to them; do not
  restate a design system inside the fleet map.
- Supersedes nothing. It is the multi-agent orchestration gate in the build-craft stage,
  paired with `agent-design` (single agent).