Map the process before choosing the number of agents
Consider a quote request that needs a requirements summary, a check against approved product material and a draft response. These are distinct tasks, but they do not automatically need independent agents. A fixed workflow may handle them with less coordination and simpler support.
Use a specialist agent when the task benefits from its own tools or reasoning and has a clear input and output. Keep deterministic work, such as required-field checks, calculations and known routing rules, in application logic. Do not add an agent just to call an API.
Anthropic: workflows and agents
Give each step a contract
For the quote-request example, a summariser produces a draft tied to the customer’s supplied requirements. A document-review step returns relevant approved references and unresolved conflicts. A response step prepares an answer for a person to check. None of those steps grants permission to commit to a price or delivery date.
| Step | Output and boundary |
|---|---|
| Intake | A validated request with a stable business record ID. |
| Requirements summary | A draft with source references and missing information identified. |
| Reference check | Relevant approved material, with unresolved contradictions retained. |
| Response preparation | A draft that distinguishes confirmed facts from questions. |
| Human review | An explicit decision to revise, approve or request more information. |
Choose one authoritative workflow state
Salesforce can hold the business record while a suitable durable store holds execution state. Decide which system owns each status and how they reconcile. Make can coordinate integrations, but a successful scenario run does not, on its own, establish that the whole customer request is complete.
Assign a workflow ID and stable step identifiers. Record which source version each step used, its result and whether that result was accepted. A cancelled request or a newer customer update must not be overwritten by a delayed callback from an earlier run.
Design concurrent work and retries deliberately
Use atomic state transitions or a queue mechanism appropriate to the chosen platform. A check followed by a separate “start processing” update leaves a race between workers. Do not assume that every Salesforce endpoint supports the same conditional-write mechanism; verify the chosen API and object behaviour.
A fixed time bucket is not a substitute for a stable operation ID. An expiring lock is not sufficient if the expired worker can still write. Recover legitimate work after conflicts, and prevent stale workers from committing a result after ownership changes.
If several records must change, define how partial completion is detected and repaired. Separate API calls are not automatically one transaction. When the result of a write is uncertain, reconcile the destination before replaying it.
Keep approval and access outside agent-to-agent conversation
Each step should receive only the records and tools it needs. The coordinator must enforce the approved sequence, destinations and action permissions. An agent’s request for broader access is a request to review, not an instruction to grant it.
Agree time, call and cost limits for the complete workflow. Route unresolved inputs to a person instead of allowing specialists to debate indefinitely. Keep customer documents from becoming instructions that alter tools or bypass review.
Judge the complete customer journey
Test incomplete requests, conflicting product information, duplicate events, simultaneous updates, late callbacks, cancellation and provider outages. Verify that the person reviewing the draft can reach the source material and recover unfinished work.
Compare the multi-agent design with a simpler workflow using the same examples. Measure accepted outputs, correction time, incomplete requests and operating cost. Keep the extra architecture only if it improves the result enough to justify the support it needs.
See a simpler Salesforce and Claude integration pattern
Discuss a similar workflow
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