Enterprise AI Agent Design Patterns

17 architectural blueprints for building reliable, governed enterprise AI agents on Workato.

Design Patterns Architecture

What This Cookbook Is For

Workato's Genie design patterns documentation is the capability reference — what each pattern is called and what it configures. This cookbook exists for the layer above that: the reasoning an architect goes through before touching the job description at all — which shape fits the problem, what you're trading away by choosing it, and what breaks when a team picks the wrong one. Every page below leads with that reasoning, then gets to the mechanism.

Genie Design Patterns

The eleven official patterns published in the Workato documentation, matching the Agentic Design Cookbook's decision matrix.

Deterministic Flow

The sequence is knowable up front — so why pay for runtime judgment you don't need?
Design PatternsArchitecture

Event Router

One centralized intake vs. a bespoke integration per event source.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Guided Skill Chaining

Chain through the genie only when a step's output genuinely needs interpretation.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Dynamic Input Builder

One adaptive skill vs. one skill per form variant.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Query Generation

Flexibility to answer anything vs. the safety of a pre-written query.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Persistent State & Data Enrichment

Business-record integrity vs. per-thread conversational memory.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Information Summarization

Synthesis across sources vs. the trap of using a knowledge base as a counter.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Controlled Data Volume

Aggregate in code vs. hand the LLM a raw dump and hope.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Record System

A lightweight Data-Table CRUD layer vs. standing up a real system of record.
Design PatternsArchitecture

App Event-Triggered

Resume a thread vs. proactively start one — and validate before either.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Genie as MCP Server

Give another surface a front door vs. rebuild the genie's logic for it.
Design PatternsMCP

Additional Architecture & Governance Patterns

Parallelization

Are these units of work actually independent of each other's results?
Design PatternsPerformance

Multi-Agent Collaboration

One generalist genie vs. narrower specialists plus coordination overhead.
Design PatternsArchitecture

Orchestrator-Subagent

Should the user's relationship move to the specialist, or stay with the generalist?
Design PatternsMulti-Agent

Human-in-the-Loop

Is this gate protecting a permission gap, or a consequential action?
Design PatternsGovernance

Memory-Augmented

What earns the governance cost of being remembered past this conversation?
Design PatternsMemory

Tool Use

Design tools around the business action, not around the API's shape.
Design PatternsMCP Best Practices

Pattern Decision Guides

When to Use Each Pattern

Match your use case characteristics to the right pattern before building. Every row below maps to a real, sourced Workato pattern.

Combining Patterns

Most genies use more than one pattern. The patterns are composable by design.

Pattern Selection Guide

How to characterize your use case, select a primary pattern, and identify complementary patterns before you build.

Source: Workato Docs: Genie design patterns · Agentic Design Cookbook V2.0, pp. 9–41

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