An agentic workflow is a process in which AI decides some of the steps itself, such as how to read a request or what to write, inside a structure a person has designed.
Traditional automation follows fixed rules: if this field says X, do Y. Agentic workflows add judgement at chosen steps. The AI can read an email and decide it is a meeting request, or score a lead from a free-text description. Those are steps a fixed rule cannot handle well.
The structure still matters. A dependable agentic workflow mixes fixed steps, such as a trigger, a lookup and a condition, with AI steps, such as understanding intent and writing content, and puts a human approval before anything risky. That way the AI's judgement is used where it helps and checked where it matters.
Staff.work's Build canvas is designed for this mix. Blocks for understanding intent and writing content sit alongside conditions, tool actions, delays and human approval, and you can test run a workflow before you publish it.