Lab: Workflow design

One-off prompts save minutes. Workflows save hours, because they're written down, repeatable, and shareable. In this lab you'll build your first one — and its format is exactly what your capstone will use.

Step 1 — Choose the task

From your Pattern-spotting prompt in the first lesson of this module, pick the task that is: recurring (weekly or more), currently 30+ minutes, and mostly one of the four patterns. Sam chose the Monday ops summary: 90 minutes of reading depot emails and writing the update.

Step 2 — Design the assembly line

Don't aim for one mega-prompt. Break the task into stations, decide which are AI and which are you:

WORKFLOW: Weekly ops summary          OWNER: Sam    CADENCE: Mondays

1. [ME]  Collect the week's depot emails + delivery stats into one paste.
2. [AI]  Prompt A: extract every issue, win, and upcoming change as bullets
         with source (which email) noted for each.
3. [ME]  Review bullets. Delete noise, correct anything wrong. (~5 min)
4. [AI]  Prompt B: turn approved bullets into the summary — house format,
         Wins / Issues / Coming up, under 150 words, direct tone.
5. [ME]  Final read, personalize opening line, send.

TIME: was 90 min → now ~20 min    RISK NOTES: no customer names pasted;
stats double-checked against dashboard before sending.

Notice the shape: AI stations transform; human stations decide. Step 3 is the crucial one — it's where wrong extractions die before they can reach the polished draft, where they'd be much harder to spot.

Step 3 — Build and test the prompts

1. 1Write Prompt A (extraction) and Prompt B (formatting) using your Module 2 template.
2. 2Run the full workflow on last week's real inputs — where you already know what the output should say.
3. 3Compare against what you actually sent. Note every miss: missing fact? wrong emphasis? tone off?
4. 4Fix the responsible prompt and run once more.

Step 4 — Document it

Write the one-pager like Sam's above: stations, owner, cadence, time saved, risk notes. This document is the deliverable — it's what makes the workflow survive your vacation and transfer to a teammate.

Problem set 3

The scenario: a vendor dispute has sprawled across 14 emails over six weeks — two missed deliveries, a disputed invoice, an apology, a promised replacement shipment, and a final message hinting you'll switch suppliers. Design (on paper — no need to run it) the workflow that turns that thread into a one-page timeline plus a recommended next step.

1. 1Break the job into stations and mark each [AI] or [ME].
2. 2Justify every human checkpoint: what error is it positioned to catch, and why there?
3. 3Note the risk rules: what gets redacted before pasting, and which facts get double-checked against the source emails before anything is sent.