Building on HUMΛN — workflows as governed AI capability

Overview

This post shows how to build governed workflows on HUMΛN that meet a clear business outcome while keeping governance requirements minimal and auditable.

Start with the outcome

Defining the business goal and governance requirements before building reduces rework and compliance risk (typical outcome). Start by defining the business goal for a workflow, then map the governance requirements that must be satisfied for that goal. Only after those two steps decide the minimum viable automation that reaches the goal while remaining compliant.

Preserve the create path

The canonical create path for HUMΛN workflows is concept → builder guide → pattern; every workflow doc should follow that sequence.

• Concept — explains the goal and acceptance criteria.
• Builder guide — shows concrete implementation notes, including HumanClient usage. Use HumanClient and POST /v1/builder/workflows as the concrete implementation step in the builder guide.
• Pattern — the published, governed workflow others can reuse.

Governance primitives

Governance primitives to include in every design:

• Roles and permissions that control who can edit, run, or approve.
• Policy attachments (defined by policy_id).
• Approval gates that enforce human signoff points.
• Data handling labels that specify retention and redaction rules.
• An immutable audit trail that records who did what and when.

Each primitive should map directly to fields in your builder guide and pattern.

Workflow primitives to model

• Human task steps
• Machine steps (API calls or model calls)
• Conditional branches
• Parallel branches
• Timed waits
• Approval steps
• Data transforms
• Error handlers

Keep step types explicit so the builder guide can show exact payloads and expected responses.

How to translate governance into the builder guide

Start with the goal and list required governance primitives. Then produce a minimal JSON payload for POST /v1/builder/workflows that includes name, description, steps, and a governance block. Include examples of HumanClient calls where a human task is created and assigned to a role.

{ "name": "InvoiceReview", "description": "Route invoices for human approval", "steps": [ { "type": "human_task", "role": "finance_reviewer", "task_template": "review_invoice" } ], "governance": { "roles": ["finance_reviewer"], "policies": ["policy_id_123"], "approval_gates": ["step_1"], "data_labels": ["sensitive:pii"], "audit": true } }

Publish as a pattern only after the governance block is complete and approval gates are tested. The pattern is the governed artifact teams reuse.

What to do next

• Define one workflow goal.
• Write its concept page.
• Draft a builder guide with the POST /v1/builder/workflows payload and HumanClient examples.
• Publish the pattern behind approval gates.

flowchart LR
  A[Concept] --> B[Builder guide\n(HumanClient, POST /v1/builder/workflows)]
  B --> C[Publish as governed workflow pattern]

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