Pillar 06 — Automation, AI Agents & Custom Development
Remove manual work.
Build systems.
Get Scalable.
Growth eventually collides with operational capacity. Custom development, n8n workflows, AI agents, and automation pipelines remove the manual work that bottlenecks scale. I build the systems that let your growth compound without adding headcount.
Milestone guarantee: Agreed monthly milestones with dated evidence. Miss one in my control, next month's on us.
What's Included
A complete scalability engine.
Six core capabilities covering workflow automation, AI agents, custom development, API integration, data pipelines, and ops automation. I design, build, and deploy directly.
n8n Workflow Automation
Custom n8n workflows that connect your tools — CRM, email, database, API — into automated pipelines. No more copy-paste between systems.
AI Agents
Custom AI agents that handle research, outreach, data enrichment, and customer interactions. Built on Hermes, n8n, and the agent framework that fits your stack.
Custom Development
Web apps, internal tools, and integrations built with TypeScript, Hono, Astro, and modern frameworks. Solutions designed for your exact workflow.
API Integration
Connect any system to any system. REST, GraphQL, webhooks, and custom middleware. Your tools should talk to each other automatically.
Data Pipelines
Automated data collection, transformation, and reporting. Real-time dashboards that update themselves. Stop manually exporting spreadsheets.
Ops Automation
Scheduled tasks, monitoring, alerting, and self-healing systems. Your infrastructure should run itself — and tell you when something needs attention.
Why this matters
Every hour spent on manual, repeatable work is an hour not spent on growth. Automation isn't about replacing people — it's about removing the work that shouldn't require a person in the first place.
How it works
Build, deploy, compound.
Audit
Map every manual process. Identify automation opportunities by time saved.
Design
Architecture for each automation — inputs, outputs, error handling, monitoring.
Build
Direct implementation. n8n workflows, custom code, AI agents, API integrations.
Deploy
Production deployment with monitoring, alerting, and self-healing where needed.
Iterate
Measure time saved, expand to adjacent processes, and compound the leverage.
Automation FAQ
Questions, answered directly.
n8n is an open-source workflow automation platform — think Zapier but self-hosted, more powerful, and with no per-task pricing. I build custom workflows that connect your tools into automated pipelines.
I use n8n because it's visual (you can see the logic), extensible (custom nodes in TypeScript), and self-hosted (your data stays yours). For simple automations I also use cron jobs and serverless functions.
AI agents handle tasks that require reasoning and decision-making: research and data enrichment, lead qualification, content drafting, customer support triage, and monitoring/alerting. They're not replacements for humans — they're force multipliers that remove the repetitive cognitive work.
I build agents on the Hermes framework, tuned to your specific workflows and data. Every agent has defined inputs, outputs, and guardrails.
No — I start with existing tools (n8n, serverless functions, established SaaS) and only build custom where it provides genuine leverage. Most automation is "connect system A to system B with logic in between" — not greenfield development.
When custom development is the right answer, I build with TypeScript, Astro, Hono, and modern tooling. Clean, typed, maintainable code.
Automation falls under the Accelerator and Accelerator + Compliance packages. For one-off projects (custom app, major integration), I quote separately with a defined scope and timeline.
Automation milestones are binary: "workflow deployed and processing X records/day" or "agent handling Y% of tier-1 support queries." No ambiguity.
Stop doing work
that should be automated.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll map your manual processes and identify what to automate first.
brad@iteractive.dev