A distributed processing system delegates the allocation and control of computing tasks to intelligent agent applications running on computing resources. This provides flexible control, efficient allocation, scalability, and simple adaptation of applications to the distributed processing system. The distributed processing system includes an agent, a server, application programming interfaces, and a workbench application. The workbench application includes a user-interface enabling the description, submission, monitoring, and control of distributed computing jobs. The workbench application includes a wizard or a guided step-by-step interface that allows users to specify the distributed computing job, including applications, application parameters, input and output data, computing resource requirements, job priority, error handling, and other job aspects. The wizard interface generates a job template, which can be reused for additional similar jobs, and a job description. An inspector interface allows users direct access to the job template and job description if needed.