How to Build a Vertical AI Agent — Gis Eisenberg

• Source: LinkedIn Post
• Author: Gis Eisenberg
• Tags: ai-agents vertical-saas startup b2b indie-hacking

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How to build a vertical AI agent cash-flowing startup:

1. Find painful workflow in a boring industry → talk to 10 people who do that workflow every day → map every step, every tool, every spreadsheet, every phone call

2. Do the workflow manually first → be the agent before you build the agent → find the edge cases that break everything → document them in Obsidian as structured markdown

3. Set up your agent stack → Hermes for the harness → Obsidian vault as the knowledge base → Composio for authentication across apps → build your first 1-3 skills that solve the core pain

4. Use Claude Code or Codex to build the product → use agents to set up other agents → use Perplexity MCP and Context7 for up-to-date docs → let the agent handle the scaffolding while you focus on the workflow logic

5. Ship the agent to your first 5 customers for free → watch what they actually use it for → they will surprise you → the thing you built for isn’t always the thing they need most

6. Build content around the niche — not “building in public” content → useful content → the tips, the shortcuts, the pain points that only someone who does this workflow would know → become the person for that niche

7. Charge per outcome, not per seat — per lease renewed, per claim processed, per candidate sourced → the ROI conversation takes 10 seconds when it’s tied to a result

8. Set up watchdogs and alerts → your agent emails you when a cron job breaks or a skill fails → the customer should never have to tell you something is broken

9. Connect to OpenRouter → see exact costs per model per task → use GPT 5.5 for tool calls → use open source for lightweight tasks → route the right model to the right job → watch your margins double

Key Takeaways

• Be the agent first — do the workflow manually before automating it. You can’t build what you don’t understand.
• Document edge cases — the stuff that breaks is where the real value is.
• Outcome pricing > per-seat pricing — ties your revenue directly to customer ROI.
• Proactive monitoring — customer should never tell you something is broken.
• Model routing — don’t use the same model for everything; optimize cost per task.

Related

• 1-person-business-claude-course — building solo agent businesses
• hermes-agent — the agent harness referenced
• the-1m-solo-ai-agent-business-full-course — $1M solo agent business