Workflows

A workflow is a recipe (multiple tasks chained together with hand-offs and approval gates) that the team can run in one click.

Most work in Busy Bee is a single task: one agent, one prompt, one deliverable. Workflows are for the cases where one task isn't enough. A "launch a new feature" workflow might draft the spec, build the landing page, write the blog post, schedule the social posts, and queue the support docs (five tasks across four agents) with you approving the spec before the rest kick off.

Workflows are the difference between "I asked for a marketing push" and "I got a marketing push."

What's in a workflow

A workflow template defines:

• Stages - the ordered list of tasks the workflow runs. Each stage maps to an agent and a prompt.
• Hand-offs - what data flows from one stage to the next. Stage 2 gets stage 1's deliverable as input automatically.
• Approval gates - checkpoints where the workflow pauses for your sign-off before continuing. You can require approval after any stage, or only at the end.
• Failure handling - what happens if a stage fails: retry, skip, abort, or notify you.

You don't write workflows in YAML or code (unless you want to). Most workflows in Busy Bee start as a chat message, "draft a workflow for shipping a new feature", and Queen Bee builds the template, which you then save and edit.

Triggering a workflow

Three paths to running one:

1. From the chat input: type or pick a starter chip that maps to a workflow. Hitting submit kicks off the whole sequence.
2. From inside a project: open the project's Workflows tab, click Run: and the workflow executes against that project's context.
3. From a schedule: combine a workflow with a recurring template and the whole sequence runs on cadence. Friday-afternoon investor updates, end-of-sprint retros, weekly recruiting digests, all single-click setups.

📸 Screenshot: a workflow detail view with the stage list and run controls visible.

What a run looks like

Once a workflow starts, each stage shows up as its own task on the Work board, executed by its assigned agent, with the deliverable surfaced for review. If the workflow has an approval gate, the next stage stays queued until you sign off on the previous one. Following a workflow is the same as following any other set of tasks, you don't have to learn a new UI.

📸 Screenshot: the Work board showing a workflow's stages as a sequence of tasks with status badges.

When to use a workflow

Lean into workflows when:

• The same multi-step process happens more than twice. The second time you copy-paste a prompt, you should be making a workflow.
• You want approval gates between stages so the team doesn't barrel ahead on the wrong direction.
• You want schedule-driven automation - recurring + workflow is a killer combo.

Stay on standalone tasks when:

• The work is genuinely one-off.
• You want maximum control over each step.
• The handoff between steps is fuzzy and Queen Bee deciding ad-hoc is fine.

What's next

Workflows pair beautifully with Recurring. After that, see how Project Planning turns ad-hoc requests into structured plans (sometimes ones that become workflows).