Digital labor is quietly becoming a cornerstone of modern enterprise operations.
AI agents are doing more than automating tasks in the background—they’re stepping onto the organizational chart. With this new workforce, who builds the agents, and who keeps them in line?
That’s where SmythOS and Workday ASR come in. This article gives you a practical look at how each platform fits into the future of work, what they do, where they overlap, and how they unlock real value when used together.
Workday ASR: The Agent System of Record for the Enterprise
Workday ASR is the HR and Finance system of record for both humans and agents. It governs every member of your workforce. With Workday ASR, onboarding, access control, role definitions, compensation (and cost tracking), compliance, and performance management all extend naturally to digital labor.
In practice, this means you can register and manage an AI agent the same way you would a human employee. Assign it a role, set granular permissions, link it to a budget, and track its impact.
Workday ASR’s Agent Gateway and Partner Network make it easy to bring in third-party or custom-built agents. That way, your digital workforce is as transparent and accountable as your human one.
SmythOS: The Agent Operating System for Builders
SmythOS is the runtime, SDK, and orchestration layer for building, deploying, and running agents in the enterprise. On this platform, you get everything needed to create agents that actually do real work. From observability, to sandboxing, and both no-code and low-code interfaces.
Developers can design agents visually or in code, plug in APIs and large language models. You can also define human-in-the-loop steps when needed. Every agent benefits from built-in versioning, audit trails, and real-time monitoring.
SmythOS is built for flexibility and interoperability. Its open connectors and standards support make it easy to integrate agents with platforms like Workday ASR. Or extend them anywhere your business needs whether on cloud, on-prem, or at the edge.
Division of Labor: What Each Platform Actually Does
As you may have guessed, Workday ASR and SmythOS are complementary by design, not competitors. Each has a distinct role in the modern AI-enabled enterprise.
Here’s what we mean.
Workday ASR governs, audits, and controls every member of your workforce whether human or agent. It’s where agents are registered, tracked, and held accountable.
ASR manages onboarding, defines roles and permissions, enforces compliance, and provides operational oversight. It’s where agents are registered, tracked, and held accountable.
SmythOS on the other hand, is where those agents are built, deployed, and run. It equips developers with the tools and infrastructure to design and execute digital labor.
In short, Workday ASR sets the rules and keeps the ledger. SmythOS builds the agents and puts them to work. Together, they allow organizations to scale digital labor without losing control or agility.
How Does the Integration Work?
Integrating SmythOS with Workday ASR transforms agent development and governance into a unified, auditable process. Think of it as the best practices of enterprise workforce management.
The following outlines the typical integration workflow:
Agent Creation in SmythOS
Everything starts in SmythOS. Developers or operators design agents using visual tools or code. For instance, you build a “Compensation Benchmarking Agent” that queries external salary databases and internal HR records to generate insights.
The agent’s logic might weave together APIs, LLMs, and even human-in-the-loop steps. This agent is versioned, sandboxed, and fully auditable before it ever leaves the drawing board.
Registration and Onboarding via Workday ASR
After the agent passes testing, it’s formally registered in Workday ASR through the Agent Gateway API or marketplace connector.
This isn’t just a formality.
ASR assigns the agent a defined role, specific data permissions, an owner (usually a human manager), and hooks for budget or ROI tracking. It’s like onboarding a digital colleague, complete with an employee file.
Policy & Access Enforcement
Workday ASR now governs the agent’s digital footprint. IAM policies strictly define what data the agent can access, when it can run, and under what regulatory boundaries.
So, if an agent reaches for sensitive payroll data or attempts to operate outside its designated region, ASR mediates or blocks the request automatically.
Runtime Execution in SmythOS
While Workday ASR handles governance, SmythOS remains the execution environment. The agent runs in a secure sandbox, performing its tasks, while constantly sending telemetry, logs, and heartbeat data back to ASR.
Errors, completions, and even structured outputs can be routed into Workday dashboards or document systems. This closes the loop on observability.
Collaboration and Audit
Through Workday, agents can trigger human tasks, pause for approvals, or escalate issues when policies are breached.
This seamless interaction supports both operational agility and rigorous auditability. If an agent’s behavior changes, or if regulations shift, it can be retrained, redeployed, or retired as part of the standard HR workflow.
Technical Connectors and Protocols
For integration to work at scale, reliability and security aren’t negotiable. SmythOS and Workday ASR meet this bar through a shared commitment to open standards and robust authentication.
Agent Gateway API
Workday ASR exposes a dedicated Agent Gateway for registration, control, and telemetry. This API allows SmythOS-built agents to formally join the workforce, reporting status and outcomes back to Workday in real time.
OpenAPI, MCP, and A2A Protocols
SmythOS exports agent capabilities using widely adopted open protocols. OpenAPI for clear interface contracts, MCP, and A2A for complex multi-agent coordination. It sure has its benefits.
These open protocols ensure agents are portable and interoperable across platforms, not locked into a proprietary stack.
Secure Authentication
Communication between SmythOS and Workday ASR is brokered through secure OAuth or service principal flows.
Every transaction is authenticated and authorized. That way, data access and agent actions remain tightly controlled.
Feedback Loops
Telemetry, logs, error reports, and even output artifacts flow from SmythOS back into Workday ASR. This enhances full visibility and auditability at every step.
Conclusion
The emergence of digital labor is reshaping the enterprise. But as AI agents move from experimental projects to mission-critical team members, success depends on two things: responsible development and adequate governance.
SmythOS and Workday ASR meet this challenge from both sides.
SmythOS gives builders the runtime, SDK, and orchestration layer to design agents that can do real work. Workday ASR brings those agents under enterprise-grade management, tracking, and compliance, treating them as true members of the workforce.
Both platforms are complementary. Together, they make it possible to build, scale, and govern digital labor without compromise.