Custom AI Agent Development: One Agent Live in 2 Weeks, From $7,500
An AI agent that does real work in your business systems, not a chatbot that only answers questions. One agent live in two weeks from $7,500 fixed, with human approval on risky actions, a full audit log and spend limits from day one. Built by a senior engineer who runs AI agents in production, and you own the code.
What an AI agent for your business actually does
A custom AI agent takes a request, decides which of your tools to use, calls them, checks what came back and finishes the job, asking a person to approve anything risky. These are the jobs that suit an agent best: work with a clear goal where the steps vary from one case to the next.
Support resolution
Reads the ticket, looks up the customer and order, drafts the fix or the reply, and hands anything unusual to a person with the context already gathered.
Back-office operations
Reconciles invoices against orders, chases missing documents, and updates records across systems that do not talk to each other today.
Internal knowledge and data questions
Answers questions from your documents and databases, with access limited to what each person is allowed to see and citations to the source documents.
Sales and account research
Gathers context on an account from your CRM and the web, prepares the brief, and logs it back where your team already works.
Build it, buy it, or hire for it?
There are three honest ways to get an AI agent into your business. Which one is right depends on how deep it has to reach into your own systems.
| Option | Best when | What you are really paying |
|---|---|---|
| No-code agent builder | The job fits its templates and connectors | Low start-up cost, then per-seat or per-task fees and the platform's limits. |
| Hire an AI engineer | Agents are core to your product long term | A full salary and a hiring process before the first agent ships. |
| Fire In Belly | It must act safely in your own systems | From $7,500 fixed for a working agent, and you own the code. |
Still deciding whether to bring this in-house? Read AI consultant vs in-house and build vs buy for custom AI software.
Built to be trusted with real actions
Many agent projects stall after the demo, when the agent meets real data and real permissions. These controls are built in by default wherever the agent can take actions. Each one links to our approach.
Human approval on risky actions
Anything irreversible waits for a person, and the approval is bound to the exact action so it cannot be reused.
Our approachEvery tool call checked first
Arguments are validated against rules before anything runs, so a confused agent fails safely instead of acting.
Our approachA full audit log
Every decision, tool call and result is recorded, so you can answer who did what and why.
Our approachBudgets that stop runaway loops
Turn, time and spend limits halt an agent that is going in circles before it costs you money.
Our approachWe run agents in production ourselves
We do not only build agents for clients. We build and operate our own AI products, so we deal with the failures, costs and edge cases first.
- MakeYourAgent: an AI agent layer for SaaS, with tool calling, a managed MCP server and an embeddable chat.
- i18n Agent: a multi-model AI translation platform that developers run from their IDE.
- Kipwise: an AI teammate for Slack that follows up, posts status updates and updates records.
When you do not need an agent
The steps never change
If the process is the same every time, a plain workflow automation is cheaper, faster and more predictable.
Nobody can judge the output
If no one can tell a good result from a bad one, you cannot test the agent, and you should not trust it.
One mistake is catastrophic
Where a single error costs far more than the time saved, keep a person in charge and use AI to assist, not act.
If a fixed process is enough, see AI workflow automation instead.
What it costs, step by step
Every engagement is fixed-scope and tied to one measurable KPI. You decide at each step whether to continue.
1. Audit
$1,500 fixed
1 week
Which agent is worth building. Fee credited toward a pilot.
2. Working pilot
from $7,500 fixed
2 weeks
One agent live on real work, one KPI measured.
3. Implementation
typically $15K – $40K
scoped after pilot
Fixed quote, no surprise bills.
4. Ongoing partner
from $2,000/mo
optional
Monitoring, evaluation, new skills.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an AI agent and an automation?
An automation follows fixed steps you define in advance. An agent decides which steps to take: it reads the request, picks tools, calls your systems, checks the result and tries again if needed. That flexibility is the point, and also the risk, so an agent needs guardrails an automation does not. If your process is fixed and predictable, a plain automation is cheaper and more reliable, and we will tell you so.
Can the agent act in our systems, not just answer questions?
Yes. That is what separates an agent from a chatbot. We connect it to your CRM, ticketing, database, email or internal APIs with scoped credentials, so it can create, update and look things up. Anything irreversible, like sending money or emailing a customer, goes through a human approval step that you control.
How do you stop an agent from doing something wrong?
Several layers, decided per agent. Tool calls are validated before they run. Risky actions need human approval bound to the exact action. Every step is written to an audit log. Turn, time and spend budgets stop runaway loops. And the agent only gets the permissions its job needs. We have written publicly about each of these, linked below.
Should we use an agent builder platform instead?
Sometimes, yes. If a no-code agent builder covers your use case and you are happy with its limits and per-seat pricing, that is the cheapest start. We build custom when the agent has to touch your own systems safely, when you need control over data and model choice, or when platform pricing stops making sense at your volume.
Which model will the agent use?
Whichever does the job well at the lowest cost, through your own model account so there is no markup on tokens and the data stays under your agreement with the provider. We often route simple steps to a cheaper model and keep the expensive one for the hard decisions.
What does it cost to run once it is built?
Model usage plus hosting, billed to your own accounts. We give you an estimate per task during the pilot and set a spend limit so a bad day cannot surprise you. Ongoing monitoring and improvements are available from $2,000 a month, but you can also take it fully in-house.
Need the agent to reach a tool that has no connector yet? See custom MCP server development, or start with the $1,500 audit.
Put one agent to work, prove it, then scale
One agent live in two weeks from $7,500, measured against a number you pick. If an agent is the wrong tool for your problem, we will tell you on the first call.
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