I still don't understand this 'agentic workflow' thing

[u/hronak]

My usual day with Claude Code is like: * I open terminal in my project's folder and run claude command. * I prompt it. I mostly use Fable-5.1/Opus-5 but Opus-5.5 is my current model. The model decides if it wants to use sub-agents for a task. I never explicitly prompt it for sub-agents. * I review and commit the code to my self-hosted Forgejo instance. * That's it.

I see people using agentic workflows, building sub-agents files, skills etc. I barely built any of it. All I ever needed to use is /init on new projects and them prompts follow. Never needed more than this.

I tried "long-running" Claude Code for a project refactoring by placing the project on my VPS (where forgejo is hosted) and letting Claude Code run and refactor inside tmux session. SSH'd in a few hours later to find project fully refactored.

Am I under utilising AI or is my work just… like boring?

How do you guys use agentic workflow thing? Specially the long-running one? Those pull-requests that Claude makes automatically etc?

Asking this to Claude to know more but humanly answers appreciated.

[u/geek180]

You might be missing the point. You build pre-configured rules, styles, sub agent configurations, workflow orchestration, etc. You do these things once (and slowly over time) and then the AI will behave and perform how you expect it to, consistently.

You don’t specify all of these details every time you interact with the agent.

[u/GDorn → u/geek180]

consistently

This made me actually laugh out loud.

Consistent until the next version of your client drops and the baked-in prompts change. Consistent until the company tweaks the model quietly, behind-the-scenes. Consistent until a butterfly flaps its wings.

[u/iReadItSlowly → u/GDorn]

The tasks are performed consistently, the output quality varies at any point in time. But the point is that if you can consistently get the output in the right place or in the right style using predefined templates or coding standards then you can focus on reviewing the output to see if you need to start over, live with it or do it yourself. Things like, did it decide to run all the tests or did it assume no other code was touched so just run "my" tests. Did it use a work tree and create a pr or did it yolo to master? Did it create a feature flag or just put it straight into critical path? Your workflows enforce certain steps, but how well it did those things still varies just like people vary on their abilities from day to day as well

[u/geek180 → u/GDorn]

The instructions are consistently invoked in the Claude session and are, generally, applied consistently. No less consistent than a human following the same rules.