Blog · Published · Updated
Buying an AI agent with explicit decision authority
Short answer
When you buy an AI agent, write down separately what it may read, what it may prepare and what it may do. Writing to a system and sending a commitment to a client need approval. A missing confirmation from the carrier stops the case with a named person. At Syntalith an agent costs from €3,000 net, and with 400 order changes a month at 12 minutes each it pays back in 1.5 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per agent for one process, build paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 6–16 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 4 min read
Statistics
AI agents: statistics 2026
1.5 mo.
payback of a €3,000 agent at 400 order changes a month: €2,792 of work today, €855 with checking and the model. Scenario.
20% and 40%
According to Anthropic (2026), about 20% of sessions by new Claude Code users run with full auto-approval of actions, against over 40% among experienced users.
Source: Anthropic, Measuring AI agent autonomy in practice (2026) ↗
2 times
According to Anthropic (2026), on the most complex tasks Claude Code stops to ask for clarification more than twice as often as a person interrupts it.
Source: Anthropic, Measuring AI agent autonomy in practice (2026) ↗
40%
According to Gartner (2025), over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of costs, unclear value or weak risk controls.
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies using AI say people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
What „the agent handles order changes” means
That sentence in a proposal leaves too much open to interpretation. It can mean gathering data for an employee, changing a date in the system on its own or sending the client a confirmation. Each of those scopes has a different cost of error.
An example: a client asks for an earlier delivery and a new address for part of an order. The agent sees the message, the order and the stock availability. It has no confirmation that the carrier can meet the new date. A good agent prepares a proposed change, marks the missing transport confirmation and passes the case to the person who can get it. The delivery date in the order stays as it was.
| Agent action | Result to assess before you buy |
|---|---|
| Preparing a proposal | the client's request, the confirmed information and the gaps that block a decision |
| Updating an internal record | a change to an agreed field or status, with a record of what changed and on what basis |
| Sending a confirmation to the client | a message with only the terms approved for sending outside |
- 01Readthe message, the order, stock availability, the client's history
- 02Proposea new date and address with a list of gaps
- 03Recordthe status „client request awaiting decision”, with the date unchanged
- 04Approvethe employee sees the old and new terms and the source of the request
- 05Sendthe confirmation goes to the client only after approval
- How an employee rejects a proposal, corrects part of it or passes the case on
- What happens when nobody approves a proposal within the agreed time
- What the agent does when another employee changed the order while it waited
- Which gaps still allow a draft and which stop the case
- How the agent treats an instruction that conflicts with the approved record
What an AI agent costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 400 order changes × 12 min = 80 h × €34.90 = €2,792
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €838
- Model, 3 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €17
- Cost of one case
- €6.98 today, €2.14 with the system
- Saving
- €1,937 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.5 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 5,000 input tokens and 600 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing it on. What stays is the time to check the output, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before we quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases your team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
According to Anthropic (2026), over 40% of sessions by experienced Claude Code users run with full auto-approval. Among new users the share is about 20%. Trust in an agent grows with experience, so its scope can grow too. In the count we leave 30% of today's work for approval, because in the first scope every proposal passes through a person. Anthropic's study of agent autonomy describes these measurements.
Missing data and conflicting instructions
The scope of decisions sets which gaps the agent may work around. A missing phone number for the recipient still allows a draft. A missing transport confirmation stops the change of date. Conflicts need a separate trial: the client's message gives a different address from the order record, and an employee asks the agent to make the change without checking. According to Anthropic (2026), on the most complex tasks Claude Code stops to ask a question more than twice as often as a person interrupts it. For orders, you write that stop into the scope explicitly. The stages of a rollout are described in AI agent implementation step by step.
The team wants data gathered faster
the agent prepares a proposal and the order stays unchanged
from €3,000
Repetitive low-risk changes
the agent records the status and the field after approval
from €3,000
Confirmations to the client
only approved terms are sent, with a full record
priced after the review
Where to start
The first scope covers proposals without changes to the order. After a month we compare the proposals with the employees' decisions, and only then do we extend the scope to recording changes. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI agents. For the free process review, a description of one case from recent weeks and the tools it went through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: order handling
We run the same count for your orders in the free process review.
€3,723
a month for handling 800 orders by hand
Payback: 1 mo.
8 minutes to retype an order into the software and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading the order in our system (about €0.0006) plus matching the lines (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 3,000 + 500 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
