Workflows
A workflow without a checking step ships its worst output
Any process that produces plausible results at volume will eventually produce a plausible wrong one, and…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Chaining steps together so the result is repeatable rather than lucky.
20 articles · page 1 of 2
Workflows
One long instruction hides which step failed
A single prompt that extracts, judges and writes gives you no way to tell which of those three went wrong, and the fix is to make each one produce something you can look at.
By Bhavna Deshpande · · 4 min read
Workflows
Long inputs sag in the middle and the fix is structural
Supplying more material does not straightforwardly mean more of it gets used, and building around that…
· 4 min read
Workflows
A prompt you cannot find again is not part of a workflow
Instructions that live in chat history are irrecoverable in practice, and treating them as artefacts with a…
· 3 min read
Workflows
The step worth automating is the one whose failure you would notice
Automation decisions here turn less on how well the tool performs a task than on whether a wrong result…
· 4 min read
Workflows
Splitting a task can cost you the thing that held it together
Breaking work into steps is the standard advice and it has a real failure mode, because some tasks depend…
· 3 min read
Workflows
A prompt with slots in it is a tool; one you retype is a habit
The difference between an instruction you rewrite every time and one with named blanks is that only the…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Run twenty before you run two thousand
A small deliberate pilot answers the questions that decide whether a batch job is worth running at all, and…
· 3 min read
Workflows
A process that runs unattended decays without announcing it
Automated steps keep producing output after the conditions they were built for have changed, and the…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Waiting time and cost per item are design decisions, not details
A process that is pleasant at one item and unusable at a thousand usually failed on arithmetic rather than…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Pulling fields out of messy documents works, and the empty ones decide whether it is usable
Extraction is among the most reliable things these tools do, provided the process treats a missing value as…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Reviewing two hundred outputs is a different skill from reviewing one
Checking at volume fails through attention rather than through ignorance, so the review has to be designed…
· 3 min read