People ask "should I use an agent or a workflow" like it's a framework choice. It's not — it's a question about the task, and the task answers it for you.
The test
If two competent humans doing this task would make the same decision every time given the same input, it's a workflow. If they'd reasonably disagree, or the right call depends on context that changes case by case, it needs an agent's judgment.
Why the wrong choice is expensive
Put an agent on a deterministic task and you get inconsistent output on something that should never vary — a formatting step, a data transform, a scheduled post. Put a rigid workflow on a judgment task and it breaks the first time reality doesn't match the happy path it was written for.
Most real systems are both
An agent decides what to do; a workflow executes the deterministic parts of how. That's the whole idea behind pairing OpenClaw agents with Lobster pipelines — the agent handles the part that needs judgment, the pipeline handles the part that doesn't, and neither one has to pretend to be the other.
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