Design Workflow Graphs

Design workflow graphs as explicit engineering contracts rather than decorative diagrams. Make control flow, state mutation, termination, failure behavior, and side effects reviewable before choosing an execution framework.

Operating Principles

• Start from the objective, state, and termination contract; do not start by inventing agents or nodes.
• Use a graph only when branching, parallelism, bounded iteration, durable recovery, approval gates, or independently observable stages justify it.
• Prefer a linear workflow or one bounded agent loop when it is sufficient.
• Keep deterministic control in edges, guards, budgets, and validation. Use model reasoning inside nodes only where judgment is required.
• Give each state field and side effect an owner.
• Bound every cycle by attempts, elapsed time, cost, or another measurable budget.
• Place irreversible side effects after validation and approval whenever possible.
• Keep the core design framework-neutral. Map it to a runtime only after the graph contract is stable.

Resource Map

Load only what the request needs: