The Anatomy of an AI Workflow

💼 In Today’s 5-min AI Brief

• Your Everyday AI Toolkit: Learn more about ChatGPT’s game-changing ‘record’ feature 

• Prompt of the Week: Turn tasks into systems with this workflow-mapping prompt

• AI News You Can Use: Workflow building blocks, OpenAI business booms, and new AI Mac & Google features

• What I’m Learning: Multi-agent orchestration and smarter prompting recommendations from OpenAI

If you've ever asked: where do I start with AI at work? The answer is almost always… your workflow.

AI isn't magic. It's leverage. And like any good tool, it works best when it's placed in the right part of your process. That’s what today’s Brief is all about - getting crystal clear on what a workflow is and how AI fits into it.

🛠️ Your Everyday AI Toolkit

Record. Transcribe. Summarize. All inside ChatGPT.

A feature on paid team workspaces, ChatGPT rolled out a feature that allows you to record audio, and it might be one of the biggest productivity unlocks of the year.

If you tap the microphone icon in the ChatGPT mobile app and record a voice message, ChatGPT will:

• Transcribe your audio

• Understand the context

• Summarize, rewrite, plan, or ideate, based on what you said

Why this matters for workflows? Every time you think, “I should write this down,” “I need help sorting my thoughts,” or “Can someone just turn this into a to-do list?” - this feature becomes your AI-enabled second brain.

Examples of ChatGPT Record in action:

• Brain-dump a content idea → Get a polished LinkedIn post

• Reflect on a meeting → Get a follow-up email + task list

• Describe your day → Get a wellness journal entry

• Dictate a messy voice note → Turn it into a client proposal

Try this: Use the new ‘Record’ feature in ChatGPT during your commute or after a Zoom call, then let ChatGPT turn it into usable output instantly.

💭 Prompt of the Week

Use this prompt when you're trying to move beyond one-off AI use and toward structured systems that scale. It helps you map your process clearly so you know where to insert AI tools, agents, or automations that make work flow instead of fragment.

Try it with one task this week, then iterate. Workflows aren’t static, they evolve with every rep.

💡 AI News You Can Use

What is a workflow?

If you’re serious about using AI to work smarter, you need to understand workflows. Here’s the simplest definition: a workflow is a repeatable process made up of steps, decisions, and handoffs that produce a consistent result. And they’re everywhere:

• Writing and sending a weekly report

• Posting a podcast

• Onboarding a new client

• Following up after a sales call

Every workflow has 3 building blocks:

Start here: Pick one routine task you do weekly. Write out its steps. Use this week’s featured prompt to determine: What can I delegate to AI? What’s worth keeping a human in the loop for? That’s workflow thinking, and it’s the key to unlocking real automation ROI.

Last Week in AI

• OpenAI now serves 3 million paying business users across ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu - up from 2 million in February. New updates include "connectors" for app integration and the previously mentioned "record mode" for capturing voice inputs directly in ChatGPT.

• MacPaw is launching Eney - an AI assistant that helps you manage Mac tasks through natural conversation. It can optimize your system, edit images, transcribe meetings, and suggest actions based on your workflow.

• Android 16 is here, and Google Photos now offers AI-powered editing suggestions - like “erase” or “reimagine” - based on the parts of your image you highlight using text prompts.

📖 What I’m Learning

If you’re interested in what I’ve been digging into… check out:

1. Engineering at Anthropic: How we built our multi-agent research system - Claude’s new Research feature showcases the power of well-orchestrated multi-agent systems for tackling complex, open-ended tasks like dynamic web research. I was drawn by the parallels to human collective intelligence, using subagents with distinct roles and tools to overcome single-agent limits. 

2. OpenAI’s Tips to Better ChatGPT Prompts - This video provides a nice breakdown of OpenAI’s recommendations to improve your system’s prompt accuracy by 20%. tips will help you coach your AI into critically thinking about the tasks you are assigning it.

Final Thoughts

A workflow is simply this: a repeatable set of steps that turn inputs into outcomes. When you understand that, AI becomes a real teammate. 

Start with one repeatable task. Map the steps. Add AI where it fits.
That’s not just productivity, that’s how you begin to build your AI operating system.

Thaddeus