Not every AI feature should be an agent. Workflows shine when the path is known, auditable, and mostly deterministic, approve, fetch, transform, notify. Agents shine when the next best action depends on context the designer cannot fully enumerate.
Start by writing the decision tree you wish you had. If it fits on one page with clear branches, a workflow (or a lightly tool-calling assistant inside fixed steps) will usually beat a free-roaming agent on cost, latency, and trust.
Reach for agents when operators already improvise: triage across messy tickets, research across heterogeneous docs, or multi-step recovery that changes with each incident. Even then, constrain the action space, log every tool call, and keep a human gate on irreversible steps.
At WBC we default to the smallest autonomy that still creates lift. Autonomy is a product decision, not a badge of sophistication.