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AI Agents & Automation

AI agents and automation that actually work

Agents and automations that take real actions across your tools, grounded in your data, with guardrails and humans in the loop where it matters, engineered to survive real use, not just a slick demo.

AI agents and automation that actually work

A chatbot answers; an agent acts. It calls tools, updates records and moves a workflow forward, and that is exactly why a demo is not the finish line. The gap between an agent that impresses in a sandbox and one that survives real users, real data and real edge cases is where most AI projects quietly fail.

We build the engineering around the model: retrieval so answers are grounded and cited, tool use with permissions, guardrails, evaluation and monitoring, and a human in the loop wherever the stakes require one. The result is automation you can actually trust with your business.

Our take: code does not make an agent successful, judgement does. The model is the easy 5%; the data, the guardrails, the evals and knowing where a human must stay in the loop are the 95% that decide whether it helps or embarrasses you.
What's included

AI Agents & Automation, end to end

Tool-using agents

Agents that take real actions across your systems, book, update, draft, route, with permissions and audit trails.

RAG & knowledge

Retrieval over your documents so answers are grounded, cited and current, not confidently wrong.

Workflow automation

The repetitive, rules-plus-judgement work automated end to end, with humans kept in the loop where it counts.

Guardrails & evals

Evaluation suites, guardrails and fallbacks so the agent behaves under inputs you did not script.

Human in the loop

Approval steps and escalation designed in where the stakes are high, so automation never runs blind.

Monitoring & cost control

Logging, monitoring and token-cost control so the agent stays reliable and affordable at scale.

Claude / OpenAI APIsPythonRAG / vector DBsTool use / function callingEvals & guardrailsAWS
How we work

How we ship agents that survive real use

1

Frame

The real task, the data available and whether an agent is the right tool, said honestly before you spend.

2

Prototype

A working agent on your data and tools, measured against clear success criteria, not vibes.

3

Harden

Guardrails, evals, permissions, monitoring and human-in-the-loop steps engineered around the model.

4

Ship

Deployed into your workflow under your accounts, with cost and quality watched from day one.

What to watch for

Where these projects quietly go wrong

The mistakes we have seen cost founders the most, so you can avoid them.

Shipping the demo

An agent that dazzles on demo data is not an agent that survives real users. The production gap, edge cases, bad input, permissions, is the real work.

No guardrails or evals

Without evaluation and guardrails, an agent that works today fails silently tomorrow. We measure and fence it before it touches anything that matters.

Automating what needs a human

The skill is knowing where judgement must stay human. We design approval and escalation in, so automation helps instead of causing expensive mistakes.

Ignoring running cost

Token and infrastructure costs can quietly balloon. We design for cost control so the agent is affordable at scale, not just in a pilot.

Why appico

Made by the team founders re-hire

Agents that act, not just answer
Grounded, cited answers, we take hallucination seriously
Guardrails, evals and monitoring, not demo-ware
Human-in-the-loop designed in where stakes are high
Cost-controlled and reliable at scale
Built by the team behind cGen, an AI-native platform
Common questions

AI Agents & Automation, asked and answered

What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?

A chatbot answers questions; an agent takes actions, calling tools, updating records and moving a workflow forward, with humans in the loop where the stakes require it. We build both and advise honestly on which your use case actually needs.

What can an AI agent automate for my business?

Repetitive work that mixes rules with judgement: triaging and routing requests, drafting and updating records, retrieving and summarising from your documents, and multi-step workflows across your tools. We start by finding where an agent genuinely helps versus where it does not.

How do you stop an AI agent from making things up or going wrong?

Grounding answers in your data with retrieval and citations, evaluation suites that test behaviour, guardrails and fallbacks for unexpected input, permissions on what it can do, and human-in-the-loop approval where the stakes are high. That engineering is the actual product.

Can the agent use our existing tools and data?

Yes. We connect agents to your systems through tools and APIs with scoped permissions and audit trails, and ground them in your documents through retrieval, so they act on your real, current information.

How much does an AI agent or automation cost to build?

It depends on scope and data readiness, so we usually start with a small prototype on your real data to prove value before a full build. Pricing is fixed by milestone, and built with a senior offshore team it costs far less than US or UK rates.

How do you control ongoing AI running costs?

We design for it: choosing the right model per task, caching and retrieval to cut token use, and monitoring cost in production. An agent that is brilliant but unaffordable is not a solution, so cost control is part of the build.

Which models do you use?

We are model-agnostic and pick per task, typically Claude or GPT-class models, with the right retrieval and tooling around them. Because we default to the most capable current models, we move as the frontier moves.

Do we own the agent and its data?

Yes. The code, prompts, data access and accounts are in your name from day one. For sensitive or regulated work we scope data handling explicitly before building.

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Everything under one roof

Free quote

Tell us what you're building.

Send the brief and we come back within 24 hours, with questions and an honest scope, not a canned pitch.

First consultation is freeYou own the code and accounts from day oneFixed scope, milestone-based pricing
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