How much does an AI agent cost to build?
A single agent with tool use, memory and enterprise integrations runs $15,000–$25,000. A multi-agent system with orchestration, handoffs and retrieval over your own data runs $40,000–$80,000. Every build is quoted fixed-price per project — never hourly, and the price is agreed before we start.
What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot answers. An agent acts. A chatbot retrieves an answer and returns text; an agent decides which tool to call, calls it, checks the result and continues until the task is done — filing the ticket, booking the meeting, updating the CRM. That difference is why agents need evaluation harnesses and approval flows, and chatbots do not.
How long does it take to get an agent into production?
A working prototype against your real data in about two weeks, production in four to eight. The variable is rarely the model — it is access to your systems. Projects slow down waiting for API credentials and data samples, so we ask for those in week zero.
How do you stop it hallucinating or taking a wrong action?
Three things, all built in from the start rather than added after a bad demo: retrieval grounded in your own sources with citations, an evaluation harness that runs on every change so regressions are caught before deployment, and human-in-the-loop approval on any action that costs money, sends a message or cannot be undone.
Which models and frameworks do you use?
We are model-agnostic — Claude, GPT, Llama and Mistral, chosen on your accuracy, latency and cost targets, with the architecture written so a model can be swapped without a rebuild. Orchestration is usually LangGraph or a custom loop; we avoid frameworks that hide control flow you will later need to debug.
Do we own the code?
Yes. Full source-code and IP transfer on every build, including prompts, evaluation suites and infrastructure-as-code. You can take it in-house or to another vendor at any point — that is the deal, and it is the same on every engagement.