The 20/80 Worksheet

Architecting Agentic Workflows · Boulder Startup Week 2026

Workshop: Architecting Agentic Workflows for the Lean 2026 Startup Speaker: Sophia Stein · AI Architect Resources: agenticarchitect.ai/blog · github.com/sudosoph/bsw26-agentic-workflows

The 3 axes

Axis	High value (automate)	Low value (don't)
Volume	Daily / weekly recurrence	Once a quarter or less
Determinism	Same steps every time	Every case is different
Reversibility	If the agent's wrong, you fix it	If the agent's wrong, real damage

GREEN  =  high vol  ×  deterministic  ×  reversible      → automate now
YELLOW =  high vol  ×  ambiguous      ×  reversible      → automate WITH HITL
RED    =  low vol   ×  ambiguous      ×  irreversible    → don't automate

Step 1 — List 5 tasks you do every week

Anything recurring counts. Outbound. Support. Research. Operations. Content. Reporting. Hiring funnel. Pricing decisions.

#	Task	Volume (H/L)	Determinism (D/A)	Reversibility (Low/High stakes)	Color (G/Y/R)
1
2
3
4
5

Step 2 — Pick your first agent

Look at your Greens. Pick the one that would free up the most time per week. Write it here:

My first agent will do:

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________


It will run every: ☐ Day  ☐ Week  ☐ Triggered by event: __________


I'll approve / send / accept its output via:
  ☐ Gmail Drafts  ☐ Slack  ☐ Linear  ☐ Notion  ☐ Other: __________

Step 3 — Sketch the architecture

Every agent has the same 5 boxes. Fill them in for YOUR agent.

┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
│  TRIGGER     │ →  │  READ CONFIG │ →  │  SEARCH /    │ →  │  PROCESS     │ →  │  OUTPUT GATE │
│              │    │  (the files) │    │  EXTRACT     │    │  (cascade)   │    │  (HITL)      │
│              │    │              │    │              │    │              │    │              │
│              │    │              │    │              │    │              │    │              │
└──────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └──────────────┘

Examples to spark you:

Inbound triage:
  Webhook (form fill) → ICP file → enrich lead → Sonnet draft → Gmail draft

Competitor watch:
  Cron (daily) → competitors.csv → scrape changelogs → Haiku diff → email digest

Content repurposer:
  Webhook (new blog) → voice.md → break into 3 channels → Sonnet rewrite each → drafts in Drive

Step 4 — Estimate the impact

Be specific. Vague numbers don't motivate.

Today, I spend ___ hours / week on this task.

With the agent + HITL gate, I'll spend ___ hours / week.

Hours back per month:  ___

What I'll do with those hours:

________________________________________________________________

Step 5 — Take it home

Tonight:

☐ Sign up for n8n.cloud (or self-host on a $5 Hetzner VPS)
☐ Get an Anthropic API key with $50 budget
☐ Get a Firecrawl trial key (free tier, 500 credits)
☐ Write your voice.md and icp.md files (start with the templates from the repo)

This weekend:

☐ Fork github.com/sudosoph/bsw26-agentic-workflows
☐ Import the n8n JSON
☐ Wire up your credentials
☐ Do 3 dry runs

Next week:

☐ Let it run daily for 7 days
☐ Review every draft before sending — track approval rate
☐ When approval rate hits 95%+, you're ready for Stage 3 (conditional auto)

Two ways to keep going

Architecture Audit — 5 free 30-min audits for BSW attendees. First-come. Agentic Architect Blog — agenticarchitect.ai/blog · weekly deep-dives.

Worksheet by Sophia Stein · MIT licensed · feel free to fork & adapt