Orchestration - Workflow vs. Autonomous Agent

Two orchestration patterns:

• Workflow - deterministic path defined by code: strict control and safety, but no flexibility.
• Autonomous Agent - path is shaped dynamically by environment feedback: flexible, but more expensive and risky.

Principle of choice:

1. try to solve with a prompt first;
2. multi-step processing with fixed subtasks is needed - workflow;
3. dynamic decisions are needed - autonomous agent.

In practice, both patterns are often mixed.

Related: Harness-engineering, ReAct cycle, Guardrails