Playbook

Characteristics

The term is borrowed from operations and support: it is not just linear steps but spells out "if situation X, do this," "when to escalate to a human," and "which preconditions must hold." A playbook for an agent is typically natural language plus explicit branches, keeping the agent inside a constrained decision space rather than fully improvising.

Relation to Skill / workflow

Roughly: a Skill emphasises packaging method and knowledge, a workflow emphasises a code-fixed execution path, and a playbook sits between — prose that walks an agent through the full procedure for a class of situation, including exceptions. A Skill can contain a playbook.

Common misconceptions

• A playbook does not mean hard-coding the process — it keeps decision points but makes the decision rules explicit too.
• Steps alone are not enough; a good playbook must cover exception paths and escalation conditions.

Related terms

Sources

1. Google SRE Book — ch. 14, on runbooks/playbooks (procedure design)
2. Anthropic — Building effective agents (2024)