AI workflow startups aim to be the new Zapier

Welcome to The Workflow!

In this week’s issue, we’ll review the top AI-powered no code workflow builders, and I’ll share a tip to enhance your prompt engineering skills. Zapier and Make have long dominated the no code workflow automation space. But, incumbents are taking a different approach, building no code workflow builders from the ground up with AI at the center of every component. Keep reading for a review of the top tools in the space and some tips for improving your AI prompts.

Today’s Topics

• AI-powered no code workflow tools review

• Tips for improving AI prompts

• Workflow automation news

• Workflow Tweet of the week

Read time: 6 minutes

No Code AI Workflow Builder Reviews

The no code AI workflow builders I’ve been exploring the most recently are Leap AI, Gumloop, and Lindy AI. Each of these tools is in the early, startup stage, with each showing promise and challenges in different areas.

Leap AI focuses on automating sales and marketing workflows using AI. It features tools for content generation, lead enrichment, and email outreach, and offers a flexible workflow builder, brand voice copywriting, and an array of integrations with existing tools. It requires uploading data or submitting content via a form to trigger automations, so it’s best suited for one-off or bulk data processing workflows.

Pros: Simple to use; pre-built AI actions; pre-built marketing actions
Cons: Limited number of integrations; no automated 3rd party triggers

Gumloop allows you to build and manage automations by dragging and dropping modular components, integrating with popular services like GitHub, YouTube, and Airtable. It differentiates itself by allowing for highly complex workflows, powered by “subflows”, looping tools, and pre-built AI processing components. This is a great tool if you’re ready to build complex workflows with software development-like processing steps.

Pros: Many integrations; enables highly complex workflows
Cons: Complex builder; non-intuitive builder UI/UX

Lindy AI allows you to create custom AI assistants to automate various business workflows. Its agentic AI offerings differ it from the other two tools, allowing it to power customer support, HR support, sales automation, and executive assistance workflows for tasks like scheduling, email management, CRM updates, and document processing. If you’re looking for AI agents to perform tasks on your behalf, this is the tool to use.

Pros: AI agent workflows & chat interfaces; pre-built workflow templates
Cons: Occasional bugs; transitioning from chat-first tools to workflows

Automation Tips

My automation tip for the week is to use Anthropic’s developer console to create prompts for your workflows. They have a prompt generator feature that is extremely powerful and simple to use.

All you have to do is describe what you want to accomplish, and it will generate a detailed and optimized prompt that will work across all LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.) to generate a high-quality output for your request.

For example, for summarizing a document, enter this request into Anthropic’s prompt generator:

Summarize documents into 10 bullet points max

And it will generate the below prompt you can use:

You are tasked with summarizing a document into a maximum of 10 bullet points. Here is the document to be summarized:

<document>
{{DOCUMENT}}
</document>

Please follow these instructions to create an effective summary:

1. Read the entire document carefully to understand its main ideas and key points.

2. Identify the most important information, focusing on main concepts, crucial details, and significant conclusions.

3. Condense this information into clear, concise bullet points.

4. Limit your summary to a maximum of 10 bullet points. If the document is short or simple, you may use fewer bullet points, but never exceed 10.

5. Each bullet point should:
   - Be a single sentence, ideally no longer than 20 words
   - Capture a distinct main idea or key piece of information
   - Be written in a clear, straightforward manner
   - Avoid redundancy with other bullet points

6. Arrange the bullet points in a logical order, which may be:
   - Chronological (if summarizing events or processes)
   - By order of importance (most crucial information first)
   - Following the structure of the original document

7. Use parallel structure in your bullet points for consistency and readability.

8. Avoid including minor details, examples, or tangential information unless they are crucial to understanding the main points.

9. Ensure that your summary provides a balanced overview of the entire document, not just the beginning or end.

10. After creating your summary, review it to ensure it accurately represents the key points of the original document without any misinterpretations.

Please provide your summary within <summary> tags. Begin each bullet point with a dash (-) and a space.

That’s a better prompt than I could write from scratch! I highly recommend using this tool for all your prompt generation needs.

Workflow News

• What exactly is an AI agent? That depends on who you ask. AI agents are often recognized as autonomous software entities designed to perform tasks with minimal human intervention.

• Zoom launches Workflow Automation, a no-code workflow builder, to help users automate routine tasks and boost productivity within Zoom Workplace and third-party applications.

• Want To Mitigate Risk? Invest in Automation. While automation can preserve institutional knowledge and maintain operations, it also requires regular maintenance to prevent technical debt and ensure reliability as systems evolve.

Tweet of the Week

Ways To Connect

1. Ask a Workflow Question: Submit a workflow question, and I’ll answer it in a future edition or respond to you directly.

2. Get Featured: Are you automating personal or business workflows? If so, I’d love to feature you in The Workflow! Reach out with your workflow, automation tip, or related content.

3. Book a 1:1 Call: Grab time with me to discuss all things automation, whether it’s specific automations for your business, AI and no code tool recommendations, or whatever you’re looking for help with.

Thanks for reading!

Garrett from The Workflow

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