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Workflow Design Patterns

Master proven patterns for designing scalable, maintainable agent workflows

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Event-Driven Workflows

Event-driven architectures decouple components by using events as the primary means of communication. Instead of direct calls, components publish events that others can subscribe to, enabling loose coupling and flexible workflows.

Key Concepts

📢

Publishers

Emit events when something happens

📮

Event Bus

Central channel for routing events

👂

Subscribers

React to events they care about

Interactive: Publish-Subscribe Simulator

Publish events and watch subscribers react. Toggle subscribers on/off to see decoupling in action.

Event Publisher
Recent Events:
No events published yet
⬇ Event Bus ⬇
Logger
Events received: 0
Analytics
Events received: 0
Notifier
Events received: 0
KEY BENEFIT:
Publishers don't know who's listening. Add/remove subscribers without changing publisher code. This loose coupling makes systems more flexible and maintainable.

Event-Driven Patterns

Event Sourcing
Store events as source of truth. Replay events to rebuild state.
CQRS
Command Query Responsibility Segregation. Separate read/write models.
Saga Pattern
Long-running workflows coordinated by events with compensating transactions.

Real-World Examples

→
E-Commerce Order
OrderPlaced → PaymentProcessed → InventoryReserved → ShippingScheduled
→
Data Pipeline
DataIngested → ValidationComplete → TransformationDone → AnalyticsReady
→
User Workflow
UserSignup → EmailSent → ProfileCreated → OnboardingStarted

Event vs Request-Reply

AspectEvent-DrivenRequest-Reply
CouplingLoose (publisher doesn't know subscribers)Tight (caller knows callee)
CommunicationAsync (fire and forget)Sync (wait for response)
ScalabilityHigh (add subscribers freely)Limited (bottleneck on responder)
Best ForBroadcasting, workflows, notificationsDirect queries, RPC, APIs

💡 Key Insight

Events describe what happened, not what to do. A good event name is "OrderPlaced", not "SendConfirmationEmail". The event simply announces that something occurred. Subscribers decide how to react. This keeps publishers focused on their domain without being coupled to downstream logic.

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