Custom Workflows: a team with roles, not a generalist under pressure

The guided build workflow we shipped in April is opinionated by design: spec, plan, build, test, review, ship. Seven stages, the right shape for software features, the wrong shape for almost everything else you might want a team of agents to do. So we opened it up.

What a workflow is

A workflow is an orchestrator plus an ordered set of stages, and each stage is run by a sub-agent with its own skill. You name the stages, choose the model, and decide whether the workflow belongs to one agent or the whole organization. Pick it from the composer and the stage pills at the top of the chat become your stages instead of ours.

Two come seeded. General has three stages: plan, execute, review. Product Dev has the full seven.

Scaffold from a description

You do not have to build one by hand. Describe the process in a paragraph, something like "qualify the lead, research the company, draft a personalised email, have a second agent review it for tone, then log it in the CRM," and JackHamr scaffolds the workflow: five stages, five skills, one orchestrator prompt. Edit anything, then run it. Agents can author workflows too, from chat, with the orchestration manager tool.

One worked run

That five-stage sales workflow is a real one. A lead comes in as a card. The qualifier agent reads the form and decides whether it is worth the research. The researcher reads the company's site and recent news. The writer drafts the email in your voice. The reviewer rejects anything that sounds like a template and sends it back. The last stage logs it. Five agents, one card, and you read the email only if the reviewer let it through.

A single agent that does everything is a generalist under pressure. A workflow is a team with roles.