Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about what it would take to build a modern company that doesn’t rely on hiring dozens of people to grow. A business where 80–90% of the day-to-day is handled by AI agents, leaving only the high-level planning and complex problem-solving to humans. A business that runs lean, fast, and profitably – with only one or two humans in the loop.

The premise

The idea is simple, but powerful:

Can I create a profitable service business – like a design, development, or marketing agency where the majority of the "staff" are AI agents?

These agents would handle everything from:

  • Planning and project management
  • Client communications and account management
  • Scheduling and updates
  • Quality assurance and testing
  • Simple coding and repetitive dev tasks
  • Reporting, follow-ups, and documentation

The goal is to offload most of the heavy lifting so that the human in the loop can focus on architecture, strategic planning, and creative direction.

MUXI: the AI core

At the heart of this vision is MUXI, a modular ecosystem for developing and orchestrating AI agents. It’s being designed as a lightweight alternative to platforms like LangChain or CrewAI, but with a focus on real-world use, automation, and custom workflows—not just demos.

MUXI will manage a network of agents with specialized roles: developer agents, project manager agents, account managers, schedulers, testers, etc. – and coordinate between them to execute tasks end-to-end.

These agents will be able to:

  • Make autonomous decisions based on project context
  • Communicate with clients via Slack, WhatsApp, or email
  • Work with project tools like GitHub, Linear, Notion, and more
  • Use LLMs, MCP, APIs, and scriptable workflows to get things done

Think of it as a command center that turns AI into your full-time team.

Rolling it out in phases

We’re approaching this in progressive stages to avoid overengineering and to get value quickly:

Phase 1: Personal assistant

MUXI will start as my personal executive assistant, helping me plan tasks, manage priorities, and track projects.

Phase 2: Project manager

Next, MUXI will handle internal project management, which includes creating tickets, following up, summarizing standups, etc.

Phase 3: Account manager

Once it’s reliable internally, MUXI will evolve into a client-facing account manager, providing updates, answering FAQs, and coordinating delivery milestones with minimal input from me.

Phase 4: Autonomous developer

In parallel, we’re building a dev agent to tackle repetitive tasks, set up new projects, run tests, and gradually take on more meaningful coding responsibilities with human review.

Human-in-the-loop

The idea isn’t to eliminate humans altogether but to give me, as a founder, the ability to operate at a larger scale with minimal headcount. Human interaction can still happen where it adds value – like onboarding, critical decisions, or creative brainstorming – but the day-to-day execution will be offloaded.

This makes the model scalable, affordable, and unique. For example, we could offer “Human CTO + AI team” packages that include weekly planning calls and a team of AI-powered agents who handle implementation, updates, and support.

Pricing and positioning

One interesting idea is to have transparent pricing and clarify that most of the work is done by AI. For some clients, that might be a dealbreaker. For those who care about price, speed, and outcomes - it could actually be a huge plus.

There’s even room for tiered pricing:

  • Low-touch, AI-only plans
  • Hybrid plans with light human oversight
  • High-touch plans for those who want a dedicated manager

Building the right foundation

While plenty of automation tools and agent frameworks are out there, most are too general, brittle, or not customizable enough for production use. Furthermore, I only use tools that I know exactly how they work under the hood.

That’s why I’m building this in-house using a mix of:

  • agent orchestrators
  • custom-built agent infrastructure
  • API integrations with tools we already use
  • strong design systems and templates to keep quality consistent

This also gives me full control over behavior, reliability, and customization - especially important when you're planning to expose agents to clients.

Your thoughts?

This is still very much in the early days, and I’d love feedback.

  • What sounds exciting here?
  • What sounds naĂŻve or risky?
  • Any gotchas you think I might be missing?

Drop your thoughts in the thread. Always appreciate smart opinions 🙏