๐Ÿ“ Built in Ontario for businesses across Canada

AI Agents That Do Real Work
Inside the Tools You Already Use

We design, build and run AI agents for Canadian businesses with roughly 10 to 200 staff. Your agent works in your email, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, CRM and accounting system. A person approves anything that matters, every action is logged, and you get a fixed price before work starts.

Built with tools you can trust

n8nClaudeOpenAIRetell AIVapiMicrosoft 365Ollama
Free prototype offer

AI coding tools now do the build work about 5x faster. Are those savings being passed on to you?

"I'll build you a working prototype in 5 business days, free, no obligation."

Scott Holmes, founder

What got faster is the mechanical build work: scaffolding, integrations, wiring and testing. Understanding your workflow still takes a person's time, which is what the free audit call is for.

The terms, in short

  • 5 business days: working within 5 business days of the day we have your sample data and test access, and shown to you on a video call.
  • Free: one workflow or one agent, built on your real tools in a test setup or on sample data. It never touches live customers or production data.
  • No obligation: if you don't go ahead, you owe nothing and keep a written summary of what it does and what the full build would cost.
  • 4 a month: about one a week, first come, first served. If the month is full, you get the next start date.

Where do your team's hours go?

If one of these sounds like your week, an agent can probably take it over.

Orders arrive by email, then get typed in again

Someone opens each purchase order, reads it, and re-keys it into your ERP or accounting system. It's slow, and one wrong part number becomes a wrong shipment.

Fix: an operations agent

Calls go to voicemail when everyone is busy

Lunch hour, after 5 p.m., or two lines ringing at once. Some callers leave a message. Others phone the next company on their list.

Fix: a customer agent

Quotes go out and nobody follows up

Your estimators have moved on to the next job. Last Tuesday's quote sits in the sent folder until the customer buys somewhere else.

Fix: a customer agent

You'd use AI, but your data can't leave your control

Client files, financial records, or a contract that says data stays in Canada. You need an agent that runs where you decide.

Fix: a private agent

What kinds of AI agents do we build?

We sort agents by where the work happens: your back office, your customers, or data that has to stay private.

Operations agents

Read incoming email and documents, pull out the details, and enter them where they belong: orders into your ERP, bills into QuickBooks, leads into HubSpot. They also prepare quotes, build scheduled reports and draft replies for a person to send.

Operations agents

Customer agents

Answer your phone and website chat from your own documents, qualify the enquiry, book the appointment, update the CRM and pass the conversation to a person with a summary. Voice agents run on Retell AI or Vapi.

Customer agents

Private and self-hosted agents

Agents that run on a Canadian cloud region or your own hardware, using open-weight models such as Llama, Qwen and Mistral through Ollama. Locked-down access, approval steps and an audit trail come standard.

Private agents

What is an AI agent, and how is it different from a chatbot?

An AI agent reads a piece of incoming work, decides what needs to happen, and uses your software to do it. A chatbot only talks. A workflow only follows fixed rules.

ChatbotWorkflow automationAI agent
What it doesAnswers questions in a chat windowMoves data between apps when a set trigger firesReads the input, decides the next step, and uses your tools to take it
Messy input (a scanned PO, a rambling email)Can read it, can't act on itBreaks unless the data arrives in the expected formatHandles it. That's its main job
Takes action in your systemsRarelyYes, the exact steps it was givenYes, within the permissions you set
Example"What are your hours?" on a websiteNew web form becomes a row in a Google SheetReads a supplier's PDF quote, matches parts to your catalogue and drafts a PO for approval
Where a person fitsTakes over when it gets stuckFixes it when a rule breaksApproves anything that sends money, signs or emails a customer

In practice, our agents sit on top of ordinary workflows. The workflow handles the fixed steps and the AI handles the reading and judgment. For the long version, read What AI agents actually do for a business.

How does a project with us run?

Six steps from first call to a working agent. You see a prototype within 5 business days, and the production agent is typically live about 2 weeks after you approve the price.

Free 30-minute audit

On a phone or video call, we look at where the hours go and agree on the one job worth prototyping first.

Free prototype in 5 business days

One workflow or one agent, working on your tools in a test setup or on sample data. You watch it run on a video call. No obligation.

Fixed price in writing

If you want it in production, you get a written scope and one fixed price. The prototype isn't charged on top.

Production build

We connect it to your live tools with the least access it needs, and you review a staging version. Typically live in about 2 weeks.

Go-live with support

The agent starts on real work with approvals switched on. Documentation, a walkthrough and 2 weeks of support are included.

Optional monthly support

Monitoring, fixes and small changes, month to month. Cancel anytime, and you keep everything we built.

What stops an agent from making a costly mistake?

AI models get things wrong sometimes. We design every agent on the assumption that it will.

Built into every agent

  • Human approval: anything that sends money, signs something or emails a customer waits for a person. You choose which other actions need sign-off.
  • Full activity log: every input, decision, tool call and change is recorded with a time stamp, so you can see what the agent did and why.
  • Least-privilege access: each agent gets its own account with only the permissions its job needs. It can't roam your drive or approve its own work.
  • A safe fallback: when the agent isn't confident, it stops and hands the case to a named person instead of guessing.
  • An off switch: you can pause any agent, and your team carries on by hand.

You know where your data goes

Before you sign, we show you where each piece runs: which model provider sees which data, and where it's stored.

If your data has to stay in Canada, we can run the model on Azure Canada Central, AWS ca-central-1 or your own hardware. We design with PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25 in mind.

Private and self-hosted agents

Which tools do your agents work with?

Your agent works in the software your team already opens every morning. These are the tools we build with.

Microsoft 365Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel. Agents read and file email, post approval requests in Teams and update shared sheets.
Google WorkspaceGmail, Drive, Sheets and Calendar, for teams that run on Google.
HubSpot and GoHighLevelNew contacts, deal stages, call notes and follow-up tasks, kept current without anyone typing them.
QuickBooksBills, invoices and customer records, entered as drafts for a person to approve.
n8n, Make.com and ZapierThe workflow layer that connects your apps and runs each agent's steps on a trigger or schedule.
Claude and OpenAIHosted language models that read documents, write drafts and decide the next step.
Retell AI, Vapi and TwilioPhone numbers and voice agents that answer calls, qualify callers and book appointments.
Ollama with Llama, Qwen and MistralOpen-weight models that run on Canadian cloud servers or on your own hardware.

Don't see your ERP or industry software? If it has an API or can send and receive email, an agent can usually work with it. We confirm that on the audit call, before any price.

112 systems built. 69 running today. Ask to see any of them.

Most of what you need is already built, tested and running somewhere in our portfolio, alongside 130 n8n workflows. That's why we publish fixed prices instead of quoting from scratch. Here are three that are live right now.

Starfish: deny-by-default governance layer for AI agents

Deployed

Drops onto an existing Claude Code or AI-agent build and routes every tool call through one policy decision point that defaults to deny, confines file and shell access to a boundary, vets each skill for risk and prompt injection before it can run, and records every action in a hash-chained audit log. Published as an npm command-line tool with a resident, fail-closed policy daemon.

How it's built →

Encrypted watch-list screening batch exchange

Live in production

Built for a Canadian consumer lender

Each morning sends a lender's customer screening batch to a sanctions and watch-list screening service: pulled from SharePoint, unzipped, PGP-encrypted by a small serverless microservice and uploaded by SFTP. Later it collects the results, decrypts them, flattens the XML into a readable CSV, files it in SharePoint and emails the analysts.

How it's built →

Field-services back office: purchase-order parsing, hours roll-up and billing prep

Live in production

Built for a wireless and telecom engineering firm

Every hour, reads incoming purchase-order emails, takes the PO and tracking numbers from the attached PDF or the email body, finds the matching completed job on the company's Monday.com board and writes the PO number. Each email is then filed as processed or failed, replacing manual lookup and typing.

How it's built →
Ontario, Canada

Who builds your agents?

AI Agents for Business was founded by Scott Holmes, an Ontario-based AI automation builder. Scott builds n8n workflow automations, AI voice agents on Retell AI and Vapi, knowledge systems with Claude and Flowise, and AI agents with the Claude API and MCP.

He has built AI systems for clients ranging from local trades businesses to technology companies. Calls are by phone or video, and we work with businesses across Canada.

About us
Free
Audit call and working prototype, no obligation
5 days
Business days to a free working prototype
~2 wks
Typical production build, after you approve the price
2 wks
Support included after launch

What does an AI agent cost?

The working prototype comes first, and it's free. Production builds have fixed prices, agreed in writing before any work starts.

One workflow

Single automation

from $499

One-time, fixed price

  • One job between your apps, such as web form to CRM
  • An AI step where it helps
See pricing

Optional

Monthly support

from $99/month

Month to month, cancel anytime

  • Monitoring and log review
  • Fixes when a connected app changes
  • Prompt tuning and small changes
See pricing

Common questions

More answers on our FAQ page.

What is an AI agent for business?

An AI agent is software that reads incoming work, such as an email, a PDF or a phone call, decides what needs to happen, and does it in your systems. For example, it can read a purchase order, enter it in your ERP and draft a confirmation for a person to approve.

Will an AI agent replace my staff?

That isn't how we scope projects. We pick jobs your team does reluctantly, like re-keying orders or chasing quotes, so the same people spend more time on customers and judgment calls. A person still approves anything that matters.

How long does it take to get a first agent running?

You see a free working prototype within 5 business days of us having your sample data and test access. Once you approve the fixed price, the production agent is typically live in about 2 weeks, including a staging version you test before anything goes live. Documentation, a walkthrough and 2 weeks of support follow launch.

Can our data stay in Canada?

Yes. If your data must stay in Canada, we run the model on Azure Canada Central, AWS ca-central-1 or your own hardware. We design with PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25 in mind, give each agent only the access its job needs, and log every action.

How much does an AI agent cost?

Every project gets a fixed price in writing before work starts. Starting prices for a first agent, a single automation and monthly support are on our pricing page. Model usage and software subscriptions are separate running costs, and we estimate them for you up front.

Which job would you hand to an agent first?

Book a free 30-minute agent audit by phone or video. We agree on the job worth automating first, and I'll build you a working prototype of it in 5 business days, free.

Get a Free Working Prototype