When to Use Each Design Pattern
Match your use case characteristics to the right pattern before building. Every row below maps to a real, sourced Workato pattern.
| Characteristic | Primary pattern | Secondary consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed, pre-planned skill sequence | Deterministic Flow | Human review of step input/output |
| Each skill's output decides the next step | Guided Skill Chaining | Complex branching may apply |
| Variable input schema per request type | Dynamic Input Builder | Deterministic Flow for the surrounding steps |
| Query or aggregation can't be predetermined | Query Generation | Controlled Data Volume for large results |
| Centralized intake from multiple event sources | Event Router | Genie Handover for mid-conversation routing |
| Need domain data persisted across sessions | Persistent State & Data Enrichment | Record System if acting as system of record |
| Combine multiple sources into one response | Information Summarization | Never aggregate via knowledge-base search |
| Dataset too large for context window | Controlled Data Volume | Pagination, pre-aggregation in the skill |
| Genie needs to act as a lightweight system of record | Record System | Persistent State for scoring/enrichment |
| External event should start/continue a conversation | App Event-Triggered | Human-in-the-Loop before persisting results |
| Genie needs to be called from Claude/ChatGPT/custom UI | Genie as MCP Server | Tool Use discipline for exposed tools |
| Multiple independent items to process concurrently | Parallelization | Repeat for each + Assign Task to Genie |
| Task spans multiple specialist domains | Multi-Agent Collaboration | Orchestrator-Subagent for hierarchical decomposition |
| Irreversible or high-value actions | Human-in-the-Loop | Skill Call Approvals vs. Business Approvals |
| Agent needs context across sessions/clients | Memory-Augmented | Data retention policy required |
| Complex tool selection with many options | Tool Use | Avoid One-to-one Mirroring / Overloaded tools |
Source: Workato Docs: Genie design patterns — decision matrix · Agentic Design Cookbook V2.0, p. 9