Question 1
Does the task happen less than once a week, and can a human handle it in under 10 minutes?
Yes
Don't automate it
The build, the maintenance and the day it breaks cost more than the task ever will. Automating it feels productive and loses you time.
Question 2
Are the steps deterministic - do the same inputs always create the same outputs?
Yes
Automate it
n8n · Zapier · Python
Deterministic work is the cheapest and most reliable thing to automate. No model in the loop means nothing to second-guess and nothing to pay per run.
Question 3
Is the task frequent and clearly defined, but works with unstructured input or needs to generate language?
Yes
Create a skill for it
A Claude skill
A packaged, reusable instruction set for one repeated job. It handles the messy input a rigid workflow chokes on, while still doing the same thing every time.
Question 4
You know the goal and can define it, but the path to get there is unclear?
Yes
Build an agent
Claude + tools
Give it the goal and the tools and let it find the route. This is the most powerful and the least predictable option, so it is the last resort, not the first reach.
The map tells you what to build. I build it.
Knowing a task should be a workflow is the easy half. The hard half is seeing the four places your team retypes the same information every week, and knowing which of those is a workflow, which is a skill, and which should never have been a task at all.
That is the part I do inside companies. The last time I pointed this map at an agency, it took over 200 hours a week of coordination work off a 50-editor team.
15 minutes · No pitch · Free