Agent & Tool-Based Automation Workflow – Using Retrieval & Generation

In modern automation systems, agents and tools work in tandem to bridge the gap between user intent and actionable workflows. An agent is the 
orchestrator—it interprets natural language requests, selects the appropriate tools, and supervises the execution of subtasks. Tools are the 
specialised components the agent invokes: for retrieval of knowledge, execution of code, external API calls, or summarisation of results. 
By separating these concerns, you build a flexible system: the agent handles reasoning and decision-making, while tools execute concrete operations.

Retrieval plays a pivotal role in this architecture. Before generation, the system identifies relevant context or data—perhaps past automation scripts, 
documentation, or process logs—using a retriever tool. That context is fed into the generation stage, where the agent or model crafts a response or 
action plan grounded in the retrieved evidence. This Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern ensures that the system doesn’t hallucinate its 
way to an answer but bases its output on real, indexed information.

Tool invocation adds another dimension of operational power. Once the agent decides “I need this tool”, it passes structured inputs to the tool, 
receives a result, and continues its reasoning with that result. For example: user says “Create a script that uploads the latest financial report.” 
The agent retrieves the report template, invokes a code-generation tool, reviews the generated script via another tool, and then executes or delivers 
the final output. Each step is visible, modular, and auditable.

Finally, good workflows enforce guardrails, feedback loops and evaluation. The agent should know when to escalate to a human, how to log tool usage
(for observability), and how to evaluate whether the output meets criteria (accuracy, relevance, correctness). Embedding these practices from the 
start allows the system to evolve—improving over time, scaling across domains, and adapting to new use-cases without breaking.