---
title: "Design Your System"
description: "One workflow, end to end: trigger, data, knowledge, actions, feedback."
order: 41
duration: "15 min"
chapter: "10-the-compound-system"
type: lesson
---

## Pick one end-to-end workflow

Pick ONE workflow from your work — the one that would save you the most time or prevent the most errors if it were automated end-to-end. Design it:

Cornwall Market: Monthly Client Reconciliation

<div class="callout">
  <div class="callout-label">Cornwall Market: Monthly Reconciliation System</div>
  <p><strong>Trigger:</strong> Routine — 1st of each month at 6 AM</p>
  <p><strong>Data:</strong> QuickBooks MCP — all transactions for the previous month</p>
  <p><strong>Knowledge:</strong> Categorization skill — vendor rules, account codes, exception flags</p>
  <p><strong>Actions:</strong></p>
  <p>1. Pull all transactions from the previous month</p>
  <p>2. Apply categorization rules, flag uncategorized items</p>
  <p>3. Calculate food cost percentage by department</p>
  <p>4. Compare vendor pricing to previous months — flag increases over 5%</p>
  <p>5. Identify late payments and calculate average days-to-pay by vendor</p>
  <p>6. Generate reconciliation report</p>
  <p>7. Send to accountant via email with flagged items highlighted</p>
  <p><strong>Feedback:</strong> Accountant reviews, makes corrections. Corrections feed back into the categorization skill via self-modify. Next month's reconciliation is more accurate.</p>
</div>

<div class="exercise">
  <div class="callout-label">Try This</div>
  <p>Design your own compound system. Fill in these fields:</p>
  <p><strong>Trigger:</strong> What starts the workflow? (schedule, event, manual)</p>
  <p><strong>Data:</strong> What data source does it use? (which MCP server)</p>
  <p><strong>Knowledge:</strong> What rules does it apply? (which skill)</p>
  <p><strong>Actions:</strong> What does the system do, step by step?</p>
  <p><strong>Feedback:</strong> How do corrections flow back? Who reviews? How does the system improve?</p>
  <p>This is the exercise that turns reading into action. One workflow, designed end-to-end, using the tools you have already built.</p>
</div>

## Check your understanding

Answer in your own words — write it down before opening the key. Your tutor grades against the criteria and generates fresh variants on retries.

**Q1.** Design one compound workflow end-to-end for your work: trigger, data source, knowledge applied, action steps, and — the part most people forget — the feedback path. Why does omitting feedback cap the system's value?

<details>
<summary>Answer key — attempt every question first</summary>

## Answer key

### Q1

**Model answer:** Any complete design passes: real trigger, named data source, named knowledge/skill, concrete action steps, and a feedback path (who reviews, where corrections land). Without feedback the system plateaus at day-one quality — it repeats its mistakes forever, which is a scheduled script, not a compound system.

**Pass criteria:** all five components present; feedback explicitly routes corrections back into knowledge; plateau consequence stated

</details>


**Next:** [The Journey, and What's Next](/mastering-claude/10-the-compound-system/42-the-journey-and-whats-next/)