How to Choose an AI Agent Development Company
The best AI agent development company for you is one that can show how its agents behave in production, not only in a demo. Demos are easy now. A good one can be assembled quickly, because it only has to handle the examples its builder chose.
Production is the hard part. Real customers send strange requests, connected systems time out and models change without warning. Ranked "top 10" lists rarely tell you who can handle that, and many are published by companies that appear in them.
These eight questions will tell you more.
Eight questions to ask
1. Do we need an agent at all? A good partner will sometimes say no. If your process has fixed steps, ordinary automation may be cheaper and more reliable. Be wary of a company that recommends an agent before it understands the work.
2. Can you show an agent running in production? Ask what it does, how much of the work it handles alone and what goes wrong. People who have run real systems can describe their failures in detail.
3. How do you test agent quality? Look for test cases built from real work, repeated runs and clear pass marks. "We tried it and it looked good" isn't a testing process.
4. How do you limit what the agent can do? Each agent should have the minimum permissions it needs. Limits on refunds, payments and data access should be enforced in code, where the model can't talk its way around them.
5. How do you handle prompt injection? An agent reading emails or web pages can pick up hostile instructions hidden in that text. The company should explain how it limits the damage. Asking is a quick test of security knowledge, and a vague answer tells you plenty.
6. How will we see what it did? You should be able to trace any decision: what the agent read, what it decided and what it did.
7. What will it cost to run after launch? Ask for an estimate of cost per task, along with the limits that stop runaway spending. Our AI agent cost guide lists what to look for.
8. What do we own when you finish? Agree on who owns the code, prompts, test cases and data. Ask what happens if the relationship ends or you want to change model provider.
Warning signs
- They promise a fixed accuracy before seeing your data.
- They talk about their tools more than your process.
- They propose several agents before trying one.
- Human review isn't mentioned.
- There is no plan for after launch.
Start small
Don't begin with a large contract. Ask for a small, paid first phase on one process, with a success measure agreed in advance. A narrow scope will show you how the company works, how it communicates bad news and whether its results hold up on your real data.
You should come out of that phase with a working system, a set of test cases and a clear decision about whether to continue.
Talk to us
DPR Software Labs is an AI-native software lab with 11 years of industry experience, and these are questions we expect to be asked. Bring your process and your toughest questions.