Custom AI development

An AI that knows your business, and knows when to stop.

Anyone can put a chatbot on a website. The hard part is the AI that works from your real prices and rules, admits what it does not know, asks permission before it acts, and hands the awkward conversation to a person. That is what I build, and how I test it. From $5,000, scoped in writing first.

Scope my build See what gets built

Text me anytime: (218) 818-1023. Skip the email if you like. I read and answer every text myself.

What this covers

Assistants, agents and AI inside your own systems

This page is about building the thing. If you want a repeatable workflow rather than a custom assistant, that is AI automation, and it starts a lot cheaper.

Assistants that answer from your own material

Your prices, your policies, your documentation, your past jobs. Grounded in what you actually wrote, told to say “I don’t know, here is the number” rather than inventing an answer.

Agents that do a job, not just talk about one

Take an enquiry, check availability, draft the quote, file the record. With a written list of what it may do alone and what needs your sign-off, agreed before it is built.

Document and paperwork automation

Reading invoices, forms, contracts and photos, pulling the numbers out, and putting them where they belong. This is where AI quietly saves the most hours in a small business.

Classification and routing

Sorting what comes in: real job or tyre-kicker, urgent or routine, which team, which reply. Boring, invisible, and it removes a decision you make forty times a day.

AI inside software you already own

Adding it to a system I built you, or to one you already have, rather than buying a whole new product to get one feature.

Choosing and swapping the model

Built so the underlying AI can be changed. This field moves every few months, and being tied to one company's pricing is a risk you do not need to take.

The part most people skip

How I keep it from embarrassing you

An AI that is confidently wrong in front of a customer costs more than the automation ever saved. Four things go into every build, and they are not optional extras.

It works from your material, not its memory

Your real prices, hours, service area and policies are given to it at the moment it answers, rather than trusted to whatever it absorbed in training. Change a price on your site and the answer changes. That is also how the assistant on this page works.

It has written permissions

Before anything is built we agree what it may do on its own, what it must draft for you to approve, and what it must refuse and escalate. That list goes in the quote. Anything where being wrong is expensive, money, promises, legal, medical, stays on the approve side.

It gets tested against the awkward questions

Not the demo questions. The ones your customers actually ask, including the ones designed to trip it up and the ones where the honest answer is no. You see those results before it goes anywhere near a customer.

You can switch it off

Every build has an off switch you control, and a way to see what it did and why. If it starts behaving oddly at 9pm on a Saturday you are not waiting for me to wake up.

The other half of the answer

Where I would tell you not to build one

If a workflow would do it, buy the workflow. Plenty of what people ask AI for is really just "do this same thing every time", which is automation from $1,995 rather than a custom build from $5,000. I will point you at the cheaper one.

If an off-the-shelf product already does it well, use it. Building a worse copy of something that exists, so you can own it, is a bad trade unless the subscription is genuinely painful.

If being wrong is expensive and unavoidable, do not automate the deciding. Automate the typing around it and keep the person in the middle.

And if you are hoping to stop answering the phone entirely, this is the wrong purchase, and I would rather lose the job than let you find that out three months in. The longer version of this argument, with the running costs.

What it costs

Published, like everything else

Free Automation Audit

Twenty to thirty minutes on what you actually need. Ends with one to three things worth building, or an honest "not yet".

AI Workflow Blueprint

$499 once

The written version: your workflows mapped, the opportunities, the recommended stack, the approval points and a roadmap. Credited toward a build.

Custom AI / agent build

from $5,000

Your business logic, the integrations, the evaluation, the permissions and the escalation rules. Fixed price, in writing, before work starts.

Running costs are real and they are yours. Every answer an AI gives costs a fraction of a cent, and it never stops. I show you the provider's bill and add nothing to it, or you put the account in your own name and I never see it. Anyone telling you AI runs for free is selling you something. The full automation and AI price list →

Questions

Custom AI questions, answered

What is custom AI development, as opposed to just using ChatGPT?

A general chatbot knows the internet and nothing about you. A custom build is wired into your prices, your documents, your calendar and your customer records, follows rules you wrote, and can actually do things: file a record, draft a quote, book a slot. It is also tested, permissioned and switchable-off, none of which a chat window in a browser tab is.

How much does custom AI development cost?

From $5,000 for a custom assistant or agent, with the audit free and a written blueprint at $499 that is credited toward the build. If what you need is one repeatable workflow rather than a custom assistant, that is AI automation and it starts at $1,995. Third-party AI usage is billed at cost with the provider's invoice shown, or run on your own account.

Which AI model do you use?

Whichever suits the job, and I tell you which before I build anything. Most small business work runs perfectly well on a cheaper, faster model, and putting the most expensive one behind a job that does not need it is how a few dollars a month becomes a few hundred. Everything is built so the model can be swapped later, because this field moves fast and I am not going to tie you to one company's pricing.

Will it make things up about my business?

It will try, and so will every product you could buy instead. What stops it is giving it your real prices, hours and rules to work from rather than letting it remember them, telling it to say it does not know when it was not given something, and testing it against the awkward questions before launch. Anything customer-facing starts in draft mode where you approve before it sends.

Is our data used to train anything?

Not by me, and not by the AI providers on the terms I use them under. I will send you their written policy rather than ask you to take my word for it. If you would rather the account was in your own name on your own card, that works too, and then your data never touches anything of mine.

How long does a build take?

A focused assistant is usually two to four weeks including the testing round. Agents that take actions in other systems take longer, because the integrations and the permission rules are most of the work. You get a timeline with the fixed price, before you commit.

Start with the job, not the technology.

Tell me the task you would hand to a very careful new employee if you could afford one. That is a better first conversation than anything either of us could say about models, and it is free.

Get a free audit Or describe the build