It takes a job, not a prompt
Give it the outcome you want. It works out the steps, does them across your tools, and comes back with the result.
38 actions · 1 approval · 4 min 12 s
agents.totarabuilt.co.nz
AI agents & virtual assistants · Auckland, for businesses everywhere
A chatbot replies.An agent acts.
Give it a job. It plans the steps, works across your tools, stops to ask before anything that matters, and reports back. Scroll to watch one morning’s work.
7:43 amEight intros sent, two site visits booked. Jo approved one thing.
AI agents & virtual assistants · Auckland
A teammate that never sleeps, works inside your rules, and shows its work.
It stays inside your rules
You decide what it may do on its own, what it must ask about, and what it must never touch. Money, promises and deletions wait for a person by default.
Every action on the record
What it read, what it did, what it sent, who approved it. Searchable, exportable, and reversible wherever reversal is possible.
Businesses we work with
Give it a job · live
Brief it like a person.
Watch it work like one.
Pick a job and press run. The agent plans the steps, works across the tools, and stops to ask you before anything leaves the business.
Pick a job
agents.totarabuilt.co.nz/schoolsLive demo · try me
The roster
Eight agents
we build most.
Each one takes a job you'd otherwise do yourself, works across the tools you already run, and asks you at the one point that matters. Hover a card for the brief you'd give it.
SalesThe Lead Researcher
4 to 8h / wkFinds and qualifies your next customers
Works through the web, registers, notices and your CRM to build a qualified list, scores it against your fit rules, and drafts the first email in your voice.
Brief it like this: Find 20 commercial builders in Auckland who won council work this year, qualify them, draft intros.
Asks you before any email goes out
WebLinkedInHubSpotGmail
AdminThe Inbox Assistant
5 to 9h / wkReads, replies, books and files
Reads everything, answers what it can from your documents and past replies, books the meetings, files the rest, and leaves you the three that need you.
Brief it like this: Clear my inbox: answer what you can, book the site visits, flag what needs me.
Asks you before replying to anyone new, or about money
GmailOutlookCalendarMonday.com
ReportingThe Report Writer
2 to 4h / wkPulls the numbers and writes the story
Pulls sales, cash, jobs and ads from the systems that hold them, compares to last week and the plan, and writes the three things to look at in plain English.
Brief it like this: Write the Monday report from Xero, HubSpot and the job board, and post it to Slack.
Asks you rarely: it only reads, then posts to a channel you choose
XeroHubSpotSheetsSlack
MoneyThe Follow-up Chaser
2 to 4h / wkKeeps every promise moving
Overdue invoices, unanswered quotes, unsigned contracts. It reminds politely, remembers who promised what, and hands you a short list for the calls that need a human voice.
Brief it like this: Chase the overdue invoices politely, and tell me who promised what.
Asks you before escalating past the second reminder
XeroGmailSMSSlack
DocumentsThe Tender Reader
3 to 6h / wkReads the 180 pages so you read 2
Tenders, contracts, specs and council letters: it pulls out the requirements, dates and risks, builds the compliance table, and flags what it is unsure of in red.
Brief it like this: Read this tender, pull out the requirements, deadlines and risks, and draft our compliance table.
Asks you to decide what to bid; it only flags
Google DriveDocsSheets
PeopleThe Recruiting Screener
4 to 7h / wkScreens, schedules, keeps candidates warm
Reads every application against the job, shortlists with reasons, books the interviews, and keeps everyone else informed so nobody is left hanging.
Brief it like this: Screen the 60 applicants against the job, shortlist 8, and book interviews for next week.
Asks you before any rejection is sent
SeekGmailCalendarSheets
MoneyThe Bookkeeping Assistant
2 to 5h / wkCodes, reconciles, chases the receipt
Codes last week's transactions the way you did last month, matches receipts, chases the missing ones, and lists what you will need to explain to the accountant.
Brief it like this: Code last week's transactions, match the receipts, and list what I need to explain to the accountant.
Asks you before anything over $500 is coded
XeroGmailDext
OperationsThe Ops Coordinator
4 to 8h / wkKeeps jobs, people and suppliers in step
When the rain comes or a supplier slips, it reschedules the jobs, tells the crews and the customers, and reorders what you are short of, inside the rules you set.
Brief it like this: Reschedule Thursday's jobs around the rain, tell the crews and the customers, and reorder what we're short of.
Asks you before moving a customer's booking, or spending
Monday.comSMSSupplier portalsSlack
Hand it over
Drag the jobs you hate
into its week.
Ten jobs that eat a week, with the hours they take. Drag one across, or tap it, and see the plan it would follow, the point it would ask you, and what the week looks like with it gone.
Your week27 h of chores
The agent’s week8 h handed over
Back this week
8 h
About 46 working days a year, for the price of a few coffees a week.
$10.50
to run, per week
1
jobs that ask first
Hours are planning ranges from running these for NZ clients. Running cost is what the models and tools charge per week, shown per run in your dashboard, with a cap you set.
Guardrails
Autonomy where it is safe,
oversight where it counts.
You decide, action by action, what it may do on its own, what it must ask about, and what it must never touch. Try it: money and deletions can't be set to Auto.
Read email, documents and your systemsNeeded to do anything useful
Draft replies, quotes and reportsA draft costs nothing until it is sent
Reply to existing customersMost clients move this to Auto after a month
Email someone newFirst impressions stay yours
Book or move a meetingAuto for internal, ask for customers
Create or update recordsEvery change is logged and reversible
Spend money or issue a creditAlways a person, by default
Delete anythingIt can archive. It cannot destroy
3on its own
3asks you
2never
Daily spend cap$25
Models and tools together. At the cap it stops, tells you, and waits. Most agents use $5 to $10 of this on a busy day.
Kill switchStops every agent at once, mid-step.
Approval gates you draw
Auto, Ask me, or Never, for every kind of action. In the first two weeks it asks about everything. After that, only what the rules say.
A record of every action
What it read, what it decided, what it did, who approved it, what it cost. Searchable, exportable, and reversible where reversal is possible.
Budgets and a kill switch
A daily cap on model and tool spend, a cap on actions per hour, and a switch that stops every agent at once. It stops, tells you, and waits.
On the tools you already run
GmailOutlookGoogle CalendarHubSpotMonday.comXeroMYOBSlackTeamsShopifyGoogle DriveSheetsNotionAirtableZoomSeekStripeLinkedInTradifyYour own systemsGmailOutlookGoogle CalendarHubSpotMonday.comXeroMYOBSlackTeamsShopifyGoogle DriveSheetsNotionAirtableZoomSeekStripeLinkedInTradifyYour own systems
Which one do you need
Automation, chatbot,
or agent.
We build all three. The table shows what each one is for, and the brief day tells us which one each job needs.
AI automation
Chatbot
AI agent
What you give it
A trigger and fixed steps
A question
A goal
What it does
The same steps, every time
Answers from your knowledge
Plans its own steps and does them
Where it works
Between your tools
On your site and channels
Across every tool you give it
When it asks a person
At the gates you draw
When it is not sure
Before anything consequential
Best for
Repetitive, rule-shaped chores
Customer questions, all night
Multi-step work with judgement in it
How it happens
A brief day,
then two weeks in the shadows.
We start with the jobs, written as briefs a new teammate could take, and the rules they'd have to follow. The agent then runs beside you, asking about everything, until it has earned the right not to.
The brief day · every job as a briefThe brief day
A day with the people doing the work. Which jobs, which tools, which rules, what must never happen. Each job written as a brief an agent could take.
Job briefsTool mapRed lines
Design the agent
The plan it follows, the tools it may use, the permissions, the approval gates and the budget. Tested against last month's real jobs before it touches a live one.
PermissionsApproval gatesTest set
Shadow mode
Two weeks running beside you. It does the job, asks about everything, and you see every action before it happens.
Shadow runsAudit logTuning
Hand over, then grow the team
Permissions loosened where it earned them, a weekly report of what it did and what it cost, and a new agent whenever a new job is ready.
Weekly reportMonthly tuneNext agent
Write us the one job you would hand to a new hire tomorrow. We’ll tell you in a day whether an agent can take it, and where it would have to ask you.
Ways to work
One agent, a team,
or a partner.
A set-up fee to brief, build and shadow the agent, then a monthly fee that covers hosting, the models, monitoring and tuning. Running costs are shown per run, with a daily cap you set.
One Agent
From $6,500
+ $399 / month · live in 3 weeks
One job, briefed properly, built with its permissions and approval gates, run beside you for two weeks, then handed over.
- Brief day and job brief
- Up to 4 tool integrations
- Permissions, approvals and budget
- Shadow mode, then handover
- Weekly report
A Team of Agents
From $15,000
+ $899 / month · live in 6 weeks
Three to five agents across sales, admin, money and operations, sharing one audit log, one set of rules and one place you approve things.
- Everything in One Agent
- 3 to 5 agents, staged rollout
- Shared approvals inbox
- Every tool you run
- Dashboards: actions, hours, cost
- 90 days of tuning
The Agent Partner
From $2,500 / month
NZD, ex GST · ongoing
A new agent every month, the existing ones tuned as the business changes, model and tool updates handled, and someone to call.
- One new agent a month
- Monitoring and the monthly tune
- Model and tool updates handled
- Quarterly brief day
- Priority support
Starting prices for our work. Model and tool costs are shown per run in your dashboard, under a cap you set.
Fair
questions.
An automation runs fixed steps when something triggers it. A chatbot answers questions from your knowledge. An agent takes a goal, works out the steps itself, does them across your tools, and reports back. We build all three; the brief day tells us which one a job needs.
Every action is logged and reversible wherever reversal is possible, and anything consequential (sending, spending, promising, deleting) waits for a person by default. It runs in shadow mode for two weeks before it is trusted with anything on its own.
The weekly job everyone quietly hates: high repetition, clear rules, a result you can check. Lead research, the inbox, the Monday report and invoice chasing are the usual first four.
Gmail, Outlook, HubSpot, Monday.com, Xero, MYOB, Slack, Teams, Shopify, Google Drive, Seek and most things with an API. Where there is no API we build careful browser automations with a person's login and a tight scope.
Yes, inside the hours you set. Many clients run the inbox assistant and the researcher overnight, so the morning starts with the work done and a short list of decisions.
Hosted in Sydney or Auckland, your data never used to train anything, the Privacy Act in the design. Each agent gets its own login with the least access it needs, and you can see and export everything it touched.
Low. A typical agent spends a few dollars a day on models and tools, shown per run in your dashboard, with a daily cap it cannot exceed. Most clients spend less in a month than one afternoon of admin.
Four o’clock. The agents stay.Hand over the job,
Hand over the job,
keep the decisions.
Write us the job you would give a new hire tomorrow. Within a day we’ll show you the plan an agent would follow, the tools it would use, and the one point it would stop to ask you.
Get a quick quote20+ h.
Back per week, typical
100%.
Of actions on the record
0.
Sent without approval, by default
Yours.
Data, rules and agents
Ready to talk about
your project?
Tell us what you need. We’ll come back with ideas, a timeframe and a fixed quote.