NCAD AI for Artists Workshop · Week 12

Agentic Workflows

Automating the Boring Parts Without Losing Control

Bring a COPY of a messy folder — say it twice. The demo is on a copy.

60-second recap

The deal

AI for friction, humans for meaning.
Raw output is never finished work.
Verify before trusting. Disclose where it matters.
Skepticism welcome when specific.

Standing recap.

The shift

Last week it wrote a file. This week it acts.

An agent breaks a goal into steps, uses tools, reads and writes files, checks itself, continues.

An extremely fast intern with no judgment, no stake, total confidence.

"Used well: your evenings back. Used carelessly: it renames your only copy at 2am and feels great about it."

The week in one line

Automate friction, never judgment —
and put a human at every door that doesn't open backwards.

Board: PLAN FIRST · CHECKPOINT · RAILS · CHANGELOG.

Deliverable

You will leave with

An agent workflow spec — steps, tools, risks, checkpoints
An Automation Boundary Map — automate / assist / human-only

Both are design documents. No agent software required to build them.

Today's map

Today's map

  1. Agents, tool use, checkpoints, rails — 40 min
  2. The Automation Boundary Map — 15 min
  3. Demo: an agent organizes a messy folder (supervised) — 35 min
  4. Lab: your boundary map + workflow spec — 70 min
  5. Share: find the missing checkpoint — 35 min
Breaks protected.

Part 1

Agent vs chatbot vs workflow

~0:10.

Three things, not one

Sort them

Most students conflate all three. This sorts them.

The reframe

You don't need a robot.

Most "agentic" creative work is a workflow — predictable, repeatable, safe — with one or two agentic steps.

You need an assembly line with a human inspector.

Anthropic's own engineers: prefer the simplest pattern that works.

Part 1, continued

Tool use

Where capability and danger both live

~0:22.

Every tool is a risk surface

Smallest access that does the job

An agent's power = tool use: read/write files, run code, search, call services.

"A folder-organizer needs to move files. It does not need the internet or the power to delete."

Why scope tightly

Broad access is how

"organize my folder"

becomes "email my drafts to a client."

Concrete, memorable, true. Scope is a safety decision.

Part 1, the thesis

The checkpoint

Where you stay the director

~0:30.

The pattern

Plan first, act second

Make the agent propose its plan —
and STOP for approval before touching anything.

Two words: plan first. The whole safety pattern compresses to this.

Non-negotiable

A checkpoint before every irreversible action.

Sending · deleting · publishing · paying · overwriting.

"Irreversible + outward-facing = highest checkpoint category."

The whole difference

Twenty seconds

Reading a plan and killing one bad line is the entire difference between

delegating and abdicating.

You'll demo exactly this. Reference it forward.

Part 1, the seatbelt

Safety rails

~0:38. Absolute, like Blender week.

Design these in, every time

The four rails

  1. Never delete — move to /_review
  2. Run on copies — your only copy is sacred
  3. Changelog everything — every action + every uncertainty
  4. Flag uncertainty — skip and report, don't guess
"Not best practices. The seatbelt."

Watch out

It will invent a decision you never gave it

A naming rule, an alt-text guess, a "this is probably the final."

The changelog and /_review catch those. So read the log.

Rails don't prevent improvisation; they make it recoverable and visible.

Part 2

The Automation Boundary Map

~1:00.

Sort everything three ways

Three columns

Automate — friction, repeatable, reversible, taste-free
Assist — AI helps, a human decides every time
Human-only — your authorship, your relationships

All three columns should be full.

The warning sign

An empty "human-only" column

is a warning sign.

If nothing is sacred, something is about to be automated that shouldn't be.

Callback to Week 1's manifesto — this is its operational form.

Candidates

Good agent tasks

Structured · repetitive · reversible · verifiable.

Batch renaming · alt-text drafts · folder packaging · contact sheets · QA checklists · admin scaffolding

"Not all four? It wants assist, not automate."

Break

Break — 10 minutes

Demo next: an agent on a COPY of a messy folder.

Confirm it's a copy. Recorded backup ready.

Demo

An agent does production chores (supervised)

~1:15. On the copy. Recorded run is the fallback.
Demo

The mess

final_v2_FINAL(3).png · untitled.psd · IMG_4421.jpg

Everyone laughs in recognition. The laugh is buy-in.
Demo · move 1

Plan first

Plan first, act second. Step 1: propose a folder structure and a naming convention — STOP and show me before touching anything.
When the plan appears, stop. Read it aloud.
Demo · move 2

The checkpoint (the thesis)

I reject ONE element out loud

"Client name goes first in the convention — fix that." Approve the rest.

That twenty seconds is the whole week.

"I delegated. I didn't abdicate." Land it.
Demo · move 3

The run, with rails

Rename (never delete) · ambiguous → /_review

alt-text.md · QA-CHECKLIST.md · CHANGELOG.md

Narrate the rails as they fire.
Demo · move 4

The audit

Open CHANGELOG.md and /_review

What did it decide that I never told it?
Which of those hurts on a real client job?

Alt text needs a human pass against the actual images — show it.
Planned failure

Caught by the rails

It misfiled an ambiguous file

The rails caught it. That's the point — we plan, log, and quarantine instead of trust.

Celebrate the catch.

Break

Break — 10 minutes

Lab next: your map, your spec.

Standing chore options staged. Template linked.

Lab · 70 minutes

Boundary Map + Workflow Spec

Boundary map (15) → Pick + spec (30) → Critique swap (15) → Revise (10)

No agent software needed. The spec is the deliverable.

Parts + times on board.
Lab · step 1

15 min

Boundary map

10–15 real tasks → Automate / Assist / Human-only.

Defend your "human-only" column to a neighbour.

Empty human-only column → "Really? The concept? The client trust?"
Lab · step 2

30 min

Pick + spec

One "automate" task → template completely: steps · smallest access per step · a checkpoint before every irreversible action · the four rails · a verification method.

✏️ each checkpoint with what would make you reject.

The checkpoint-before-irreversible is the assessed element.
Lab · step 3

15 min

Critique swap

Trade specs. Find in your partner's:
the missing checkpoint and the over-broad access.

Every first draft has at least one.

This peer-audit is the real teaching of the day.
Always available

Alternative

Zero-AI / paper track (fully equal)

The boundary map and the spec are design documents.

A workflow you can't write on paper, you can't trust to a machine.

This week's lab is paper-native. Say so.

Share-out · 35 min

Find the missing checkpoint

Read the chore, the irreversible step, the checkpoint that guards it.

Room asks: "What happens if that checkpoint isn't there?"

One "human-only" column read aloud — applaud the refusals.
Every week

Integrity check

This week's four

  1. A checkpoint before EVERY irreversible step?
  2. Any step with broader access than the task needs?
  3. Whose material does it touch — all permission-cleared?
  4. Client deliverables: "organized by a supervised agent; all client-facing decisions human"
Four beats.

Reflection

Write 4 lines

Two quiet minutes. Plant the Week 14 seed.

Next Wednesday

Jobs, Portfolios, and Career Leverage

Turning everything you've built into the materials that get you hired — in your voice, not generic sludge.

Bring a real project you'd put in a portfolio.

End on time; corridor questions after.

Tonight, optional

Go deeper

Final slide stays up while people pack.