[curriculum-eval] 05-agentic-workflows-intro.md: cognitive_load — 1574 words and 26 new concepts create concept overload

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File: workshop/05-agentic-workflows-intro.md
Overall Score: 8.10 / 10.0 (corpus mean: 8.80)

Flagged Dimensions:

Dimension	Score	Benchmark	Delta
cognitive_load	3.4	10.0 (≤ 800 words, ≤ 15 concepts)	-6.6

Root Cause (≤ 2 sentences):
At 1,574 words and 26 new concepts, this introductory step is nearly twice the recommended length and introduces 73% more concepts than the 15-concept ceiling. Critically, this is an early-position page (step 5) where learners have no prior schema to anchor the new material.

Evidence (quoted from the file):

"What Are Agentic Workflows?" introduces in a single page: agentic workflows, deterministic steps, AI agents, GitHub Actions, triggers, frontmatter, Markdown brief, safe outputs, model engines, MCP tools, compilations, lock files, concurrency, sandboxing, and more.

Learning Science Rationale:
Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory states that working memory is severely limited (Miller's 7±2 chunks). Presenting 26 novel concepts in a single introductory step overwhelms working memory before learners have begun to build long-term schemas. This is particularly damaging at step 5 when learners are still orienting; information overload here predicts higher drop-off rates in subsequent steps.

Improvement Prompt (for an agent):

In workshop/05-agentic-workflows-intro.md, reduce cognitive load by:
1. Splitting the page into two: a short conceptual overview (≤ 600 words, ≤ 10 concepts) covering only: what an agentic workflow is, how it differs from a regular Action, and the three-part structure (trigger → agent → safe output).
2. Moving the detailed subsections (engines, MCP tools, compilation, lock files, concurrency) into a new side-quest file side-quest-05-02-aw-deep-dive.md.
3. Keeping the checkpoint on the overview page; the side quest gets its own checkpoint.
Do not remove any factual content — just relocate it.

Expected Score After Fix: 9.2 / 10.0

Warning

Firewall blocked 1 domain

The following domain was blocked by the firewall during workflow execution:

• awmgmcpg

To allow these domains, add them to the network.allowed list in your workflow frontmatter:

network:
  allowed:
    - defaults
    - "awmgmcpg"

See Network Configuration for more information.

Generated by 🔬 Curriculum Quality Evaluator · 80.1 AIC · ⌖ 6.65 AIC · ⊞ 6.2K · ◷

• expires on Jul 22, 2026, 9:10 AM UTC