Module 4 — Workflows, Tools and Pipelines
What this module is about
In Module 3, you designed the team: agents with clear roles, organized in a topology, communicating through handoff protocols. But a team without a game plan is just a group of people standing around.
This module gives the team the game plan. Workflows define the end-to-end process — from the moment a request arrives to the moment a result is delivered. Tools are the equipment agents use to interact with the outside world — databases, APIs, email systems, file storage. Pipelines are the structured channels through which data flows, is transformed, and is verified.
If Module 3 asked "who does what?" — Module 4 asks "how does the whole thing run, start to finish?"
Learning outcomes
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Design end-to-end AI workflows with clear stages, decision points, and verification steps
- Specify tool integration contracts that make tool usage reliable, safe, and auditable
- Design state management strategies that separate what the system remembers temporarily from what it stores permanently
- Build operational resilience with retries, fallbacks, compensation, and graceful degradation
Module map
| # | Content | Type | Estimated time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Workflow design — from trigger to audit | Lesson | 90 min |
| 2 | Tool integration — making external actions reliable | Lesson | 90 min |
| 3 | Operational resilience — handling runtime failures | Lesson | 90 min |
| A | Operational pipeline v1 | Application | 3 hours |
| B | Traceability package | Application | 2 hours |
| — | Assessment | Evaluation | 30 min |
What you will build
- A workflow blueprint mapping a complete business process from trigger to audit, with decision points and verification gates
- A tool registry specifying every external tool the system uses, with argument schemas, permissions, and safety rules
- A failure policy matrix defining retry, fallback, and compensation strategies for every critical step
- A traceability package with execution logs, decision-level event tracking, and an incident replay guide
Prerequisites
- Module 3 completed (you need an agent architecture to design workflows around)
- Understanding of agent roles, topologies, and handoff protocols
Estimated time
10-12 hours total (lessons + applications + assessment)