Work That Needs Judgment
Does Not Always Need a Person.
Some work is too varied for fixed rules but too routine for your best people: reading a request and deciding where it goes, checking records for problems, gathering information from several places. We build AI agents that do that work inside your systems, ask a person before anything consequential, and log every step they take. Not a chatbot bolted onto your website.
Signs an Agent Could Help
Rules keep breaking
You tried automating it, but every new variation needs another rule, and the exceptions outnumber the cases.
Skilled people doing triage
Experienced staff spend hours reading requests only to decide who should handle them.
Research from many sources
Answering one question means looking in several systems, documents or websites and summarizing what was found.
Data that needs checking
Records drift, duplicates appear and fields go stale, and nobody has time to review them regularly.
Monitoring by hand
Someone checks the same sources every day for changes that matter and usually finds nothing.
A chatbot that disappointed
You tried a generic AI tool, but it could not reach your systems or be trusted to act on its answers.
What It Actually Costs
This kind of work is usually done by people whose time is worth more elsewhere, which is the real cost. The illustration counts only the hours.
- 2 people
- doing the work
- 20 minutes
- each time
- 40 times a week
- across everyone
- $45 an hour
- loaded cost per person
About 13 hours a week, or $27,600 to $31,200 a year
How We Build Agents That Can Be Trusted
An agent is only as useful as the limits around it. Most of the engineering is deciding what it may do on its own and proving what it did.
Define the job and its limits
We write down what the agent may read, what it may change, and which actions always need a person to approve them.
Give it real tools
The agent works through defined connections to your systems, not by guessing. Every tool it can call is listed, and nothing else is reachable.
Test on real cases
Before launch it runs against a set of your past cases, and the results are reviewed with you. Where it is not reliable enough, it hands off instead of acting.
Log and review
Every step, source and decision is recorded. People review uncertain cases, and the provider underneath stays replaceable.
Before and After
An illustration of a common workflow, not a client project.
A support lead reads every incoming request, looks up the customer’s account and recent orders, decides whether it is billing, technical or sales, and forwards it with a short summary.
An agent reads each request, looks up the account, drafts the category and a summary with links to the records it used, and routes routine cases. Refund requests and anything it is unsure about go to the support lead for a decision.
Agent, or Normal Automation?
An AI agent fits
- Inputs vary too much for fixed rules
- A reasonable answer can be checked against your records
- Mistakes can be caught before they reach a customer
- The volume justifies building and monitoring it
Normal automation is better
- The steps are the same every time
- Every decision must be exactly right with no review
- The information it needs is not available to any system
- A person would need to approve every single step anyway
Typical Starting Points
Work is priced by scope, not by the hour. You get a written scope with a fixed price before anything starts, and larger builds are split into milestones. The ranges below show where engagements typically start.
See Starting Prices
| Engagement | When it fits | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Automation Opportunity Review | You know the workflow hurts, but not yet what, if anything, to build: one workflow reviewed, with the smallest worthwhile fix in a written action plan. | $495 fixed fee |
| Core Automation or Integration Build | Workflows and system connections the business runs on, priced in a written scope. | From $5,000 |
| Custom Engagements | New products, AI agents, private AI, custom applications, modernization and data platforms, scoped and priced in writing. | Quoted in writing |
| Operations Automation Partnership | After a build: monitoring, maintenance, vendor and API changes, and small improvements. | From $750 / month |
Hosting, domains, licenses, subscriptions, and processing fees stay in accounts you own and are billed to you directly by each vendor whenever practical. Where we must place an approved charge on your behalf, that amount is collected before we incur it.
After the Build
Every build ends with documentation and a handoff, so your team can run it. If you would rather not, a monthly partnership covers monitoring, vendor and API changes, and small improvements under its own written agreement.
See Partnership LevelsBefore You Ask
- What is the difference between an agent and a chatbot?
- A chatbot answers questions. An agent carries out work: it uses tools to read and update your systems, within limits you set, and records what it did.
- Can an agent make mistakes?
- Yes, which is why it is designed around that. Consequential actions need approval, uncertain cases go to a person, and every step is logged so errors are visible and correctable.
- Which AI provider do you use?
- The one that fits your requirements and budget. We build on providers such as Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or Bedrock, or on a private model, and keep that choice swappable.
- Is our data used to train someone else’s model?
- That depends on the provider and the plan. We explain the data terms of the option we recommend before anything is built, and a private deployment is available when they are not acceptable.
- How do we start?
- With one well-defined job. The review looks at the work, the systems involved and how mistakes would be caught, and recommends whether an agent or simpler automation fits.
Figures on this page are illustrations based on the stated inputs, not client results, and are not a promise of savings. We do not guarantee any particular business, time-saving or technical outcome. This page is a summary for convenience; our Terms of Service govern.
Full terms: Terms of Service
What Work Needs a Little Judgment, All Day Long?
Describe the work, the systems it touches and what a mistake would cost. We will tell you whether an agent is the right tool.