Build your first workflow with the Workflow Builder agent
The Workflow Builder is the fastest way to go from "I should automate this" to "this is running on a schedule." Here's a tight walkthrough.
Pick something concrete
The builder works best when you can describe the what and the when clearly. Good starter prompts:
- "Every Friday at 3pm, summarize the week's closed tickets and save a report to my Library"
- "Daily at 9am, pull yesterday's metrics from our analytics MCP and post a summary to the team's shared project"
- "When I drop a PDF into my Library 'Inbox' folder, extract the key facts and save a markdown summary alongside it"
Pick one of yours that fits this shape. We'll use the Friday-tickets example.
Walk through the loop
1. Open the builder
From Workflows, click Create with Builder. A conversation opens with the Workflow Builder agent.
2. Describe it
Every Friday at 3pm in Asia/Singapore, summarize the week's closed tickets grouped by category, and save a markdown report to my Library folder named "Weekly status." Use Content Summarizer for the writing. If the week had zero closed tickets, just write "Quiet week" instead of failing.
Notice three things in that prompt:
- Specific trigger — "Friday 3pm in Asia/Singapore" beats "weekly"
- Named agent — Content Summarizer, so the builder doesn't have to guess
- Edge case handled — "if zero tickets, write 'Quiet week'" stops the workflow from breaking on slow weeks
3. Review the draft
The builder shows the proposed steps before publishing anything. Walk through and tweak prompts inline if you want different phrasing.
4. Publish
Click Publish. The workflow gets a version number and a short wiki page. Anyone on your team can read the wiki without reverse-engineering the DAG.
5. Watch the diagnose loop
The first execution is monitored. If a step returns nothing, or the output format isn't quite right, the builder surfaces a short report with suggested fixes — usually a one-click apply.
The trap to avoid
Don't put a workflow on a schedule before the first manual run looks good. The diagnose loop catches a lot, but it can't catch "this isn't actually what I wanted." Run once by hand, look at the output, then schedule it.
What I've found useful
- Name the workflow after the output, not the trigger. "Weekly status report" reads better in the Inbox than "Friday 3pm cron"
- Keep the prompt for the final step opinionated. The builder will write a generic "format as markdown" prompt unless you tell it what kind of markdown — table, prose, bullet list, etc.
- Don't be afraid to rebuild. Drafting a v2 takes about as long as drafting v1; if v1 has a structural problem, just describe it again with the lesson baked in
Got a workflow you've built with the builder? Drop a screenshot in Showcase — I'd love to see what people are automating.