n8n's new Agents (announced September 25, 2026) make a useful design pattern explicit: an agent can use your existing workflows as tools. The agent decides when to call a workflow; the workflow decides exactly what happens.
n8n's example is a support agent with three workflow tools: get account context, add a note to an account, and page on-call. Because the note is written by a workflow that can only add a note, the agent never holds a CRM write credential.
n8n also lets you mark tools as sensitive so the agent pauses for Approve or Reject, runs each tool with its own credential, and stores every session with its tool calls for review. n8n advises starting with scoped tools, a test channel, and approvals on anything that writes to a system of record. The feature is labeled preview.
The pattern applies beyond n8n: wrap each write action your agent needs in a small, tested automation with its own narrow permissions, require human approval for irreversible actions, and log everything.