Dify guides

Step-by-step guides, appendices and a two-hour workshop on building AI agents in Dify for education. Made by LeX Consultancy B.V. All examples play at Example College (fictional); screens captured on Dify cloud, 20 September 2026.

The screenshots show the Dutch build of the same apps (Dify's menus in Dutch, Dutch text in the fields); the screens, buttons and clicks are identical, and every guide says so on its first page. Prompts, sample documents and instructions in the guides are in English, so you can build the English version directly.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (documents, slides, images) and MIT (scripts), see LICENSE.md. Owner and contact: Guido van Dijk, guido@l-e-x.nl.

Contents

Folder	Title	For whom	Size
01-workflow	Building in Dify: from workflow to agent	Beginners	22 pp.
02-agent-knowledge-base	Building in Dify: an agent with its own knowledge base	Beginners, sequel to 01	22 pp.
03-school-communication	Dify for school communication: parent letter, school news, reception	Communications teams	36 pp.
04-agent-console	Building in the Agent Console: the Test week planner (agent with file, tool and sandbox)	Form tutors, ICT coordinators	27 pp.
05-transcription-tool	Building in Dify: from recording to minutes	Departments, teams	30 pp.
06-inclusive-materials	Building in the Agent Console: the Materials check (UDL, custom search tool for open educational resources)	Teachers, support coordinators	26 pp.
07-school-news-with-checks	School news with checks: self-critique and gatekeeper, sequel to 03	Communications teams	26 pp.
08-chatflow-study-coach	Study coach biology Year 9: Chatflow with four routes, memory and a teacher in the loop	Teachers	46 pp.
00-workshop	Facilitator guide for the workshop AI Agents with Dify (2 hours): programme, formats, pitfalls per block	Facilitators	8 pp.
00-presentation	Presentation for the workshop: PDF, source of the slides and speaker notes	Facilitators	22 slides
00-design-patterns	Five design patterns for AI agents and how to build them in Dify	Everyone	5 pp.
00-design-card	Design card: one A4 to design your app before you click; in examples/ the filled-in card of each of the eight apps	Everyone	1 A4 + 8 examples
00-ai-tools	AI tools in education: what is already in school, what is allowed (GDPR, AI Act), the EU competence frameworks	Everyone	9 pp.

Every guide has a green "Your choice" box per step (what you replace with your own material, style or prompt) and a closing chapter "Make it yours" with adjustments, assignments and a checklist.

What each app is for

Every guide builds one app. This is what they are meant for and when you choose which.

App	What it does	For whom	Kind	Choose this if
Text at level (01)	Rewrites a text for a chosen audience or reading level	Teachers, communications	Workflow	You want to learn what a workflow is: fixed steps, one input, one output
School guide assistant (02)	Answers questions from parents and students out of the school guide, with sources	Reception, form tutors, parents	Agent with knowledge base	You have a document that keeps getting the same questions
Parent letter assistant (03)	Writes a parent letter in the school's style, based on the style guide	Teams, heads of year	Agent with knowledge base	Letters must have one tone and one layout, written by different people
School news (03 and 07)	Turns one message into three versions: website, parent app and social; in 07 with a checker and a gatekeeper that rejects what breaks the rules	Communications officers	Workflow	You want to see how an app checks itself before something goes out
Test week planner (04)	Makes a study plan for the test week with a student and delivers Excel and a calendar file	Form tutors, students (after an impact assessment)	Agent Console	You want to see what an agent can do that a workflow cannot: decide how, and make files
Transcription tool (05)	Turns a recording of a meeting into minutes with decisions and action points	Departments, teams	Workflow with tool	You want a file as input and a tool (speech to text) in a workflow
Materials check (06)	Assesses learning material for accessibility (UDL), makes versions for teacher and student and searches for open educational resources	Teachers, support coordinators	Agent Console with custom tool	You want to make your own tool out of a website with an API
Study coach biology (08)	Helps a student with explanations, hints and planning on ecology; passes personal questions to the teacher	Teachers, students (after an impact assessment)	Chatflow	You want a conversation with routes, memory and a human in the loop

The order is also a learning path: 01 and 02 in the first hour of the workshop, 03 and 07 when you want to help a team, 05 and 08 when you want to serve a subject, 04 and 06 when you want to know what the Agent Console adds.

Example apps

The Dutch builds of the apps are live to try out (Dutch interface and Dutch sample documents):

• Text at level (01): https://udify.app/workflow/eINp9Jdd6ICodDZF
• School guide assistant (02, with the Reception mode from 03): https://udify.app/chat/cvLAmpk60m9HUXUy
• Parent letter assistant (03): https://udify.app/chat/OJCfxjBeBHCEbBPx
• School news (03 and 07): https://udify.app/workflow/jJclFyX9BlteuHYi
• Test week planner (04): https://udify.app/agent/rKoqw8rbmp0IF86Q
• Transcription tool (05): https://udify.app/workflow/7N5dNg8fD9qXHA80
• Materials check (06): https://udify.app/agent/lkWKedkSW2d3nqBV
• Study coach biology (08): https://udify.app/chat/fP0TJW3s8IXOj9BO

Building or editing yourself

Every folder has the same structure:

guide-*.md            source (edit this)
screenshots/          screenshots, numbered in order
build.py              makes .html, .pdf and .docx from the .md:  python3 build.py

python3 _tools/build_all.py builds everything at once; python3 00-presentation/build.py builds the slides and the PDF of the presentation. python3 _tools/make_samples.py regenerates the fictional sample documents. Needed: python3 with markdown, google-chrome and libreoffice. The PDFs are in git next to the sources; HTML and Word you make yourself with build.py.

Formatting in the sources: numbered list = actions, table "What you type" = field values, code block = type literally (label "Type in"), orange box = pitfall, green box = "Your choice" (a blockquote that starts with Your choice). Layout and logo are in _tools/build_guide.py; replace the logo with that of your own school or organisation.

The Dutch original of this series is at https://git.lexconsultancy.nl/guido/dify-handleidingen.