An Agent Loop is the basic operational cycle by which an <a href="https://claude-me.com/en/glossary/core-concepts/ai-agent/" target="_blank">AI Agent</a> executes tasks: sense current state → plan next action → execute action → observe result → plan again, repeating until the task is complete. It lets Claude evolve from 'answering a question' to 'autonomously completing a multi-step task.'

Batch processing means applying the same judgment logic or handling method to a large set of similar data items all at once, rather than processing them one by one manually. Classifying 500 customer feedback entries against the same set of criteria is a typical example.

A dry run means running an automated workflow once in a way that produces no real side effects, before applying it to actual data or actions — showing 'who this would send to' without actually sending an email, or 'which records this would change' without actually writing to a database — to confirm the logic is correct before switching to a live run.

An escalation path is the rule within an automated workflow for where a problem should go, and to whom, once it exceeds what the current level can handle — typically designed as several tiers, where minor issues stay in place for self-resolution, moderate issues get routed to a specific person, and severe issues trigger immediate notification to a decision-maker.

A fallback instruction explicitly tells Claude what to do when it can't make a confident judgment within an automated workflow — such as flagging the item for human review — instead of forcing itself to produce an answer that might be wrong.

Idempotent task design means designing an automated workflow so that if the same task accidentally runs more than once, the result doesn't change or break because of it — if the same notification email accidentally fires twice, the recipient still sees one email, not two duplicates or duplicated data being written.

A retry policy is the set of rules for whether an automated workflow should automatically retry after a temporary failure, how many times, and how long to wait between attempts. A good retry policy usually lengthens the interval with each attempt, rather than using a fixed interval or retrying immediately back-to-back, avoiding repeatedly hitting the same wall before the problem has had a chance to resolve.

Scheduled Tasks is a Claude.ai feature that lets you configure Claude to automatically execute specific prompts or tasks at designated times — such as automatically generating a daily work briefing every morning at 8am, or automatically compiling a weekly email digest every Monday. It transforms Claude from 'you ask and get an answer' into a proactive mode of 'automatically telling you when it's time.'

A trigger condition is the criterion that decides when an automated workflow should run — it can be a fixed time (every morning at 9am) or an event occurring (when a new email arrives). How well it's designed directly determines whether the automation helps or becomes noise.

Workflow Automation means designing a series of repetitive work steps into a process that can execute automatically — reducing human intervention and letting Claude or other tools complete tasks according to fixed logic. In workplace AI applications, workflow automation typically refers to using Claude's scheduling features, <a href="/en/glossary/workflow-automation/prompt-chaining/">Prompt Chaining</a>, or Agent Loops to chain multiple steps together and automatically complete tasks that previously required you to manually trigger each step.