A plain-English guide to building your first working AI agents — five templates, test sets, and cost math for Lindy, Gumloop, n8n, Zapier, and Make. Free download.
Every AI newsletter is selling "agents" right now, but almost none of them show a small business owner what an agent actually is, where it lives, or how to get one running before dinner. Most SMBs don't need a multi-agent swarm or a custom-built framework. They need one agent that reads the shared inbox and drafts replies, or one that qualifies inbound leads, or one that turns a sales call into a CRM update. That's it. That's the whole game. This free 69-page starter kit strips out the jargon and gives you a working mental model for AI agents plus five ready-to-fork templates. You'll learn the difference between a workflow automation, an AI workflow, and a true agent — and when each one is the right choice. You'll see side-by-side comparisons of the platforms most SMBs should actually evaluate: Lindy for email and meeting agents, Gumloop for multi-step document and data workflows, n8n for teams that want full control and self-hosting, and Zapier or Make where integration coverage and approval steps matter most. Every price in the comparison was read from the vendor's own pricing page, and the guide prints the URL and the date so you can check it yourself. Then you get five starter agent templates you can copy today: an inbound lead qualifier that scores and routes new form submissions, a meeting-to-CRM agent that pushes action items and next steps into HubSpot or Follow Up Boss, a support inbox triager that classifies and drafts first-response replies, an internal SOP assistant that answers team questions from your docs, and a weekly reporting agent that pulls numbers from your stack and writes the summary. Each template comes with the exact setup steps, the prompts, a ten-case test set, and a break-even worksheet. The second half is the part most guides skip: how to run evals from a spreadsheet so you find out when an agent quietly stops working, a troubleshooting manual that maps symptoms to causes and fixes, a chapter on security, data handling and prompt injection, honest cost math including the maintenance nobody budgets for, and a 30/60/90 rollout plan.
Every one of these is free and email-gated, same as this one.
How to choose an AI-assisted accounts payable, spend, and close stack: category map, pricing decoder, scorecard, six-document torture test, fraud controls, and a six-week migration plan.
PDFDecode per-resolution pricing, audit your knowledge base, and run a real 200-question bake-off before you sign an AI customer support contract.
PDFA vendor-selection workbook for AI phone agents: pricing decoder, 40-point scorecard, demo-call script, 14 adversarial test calls, contract checklist, and a 30-day pilot plan.
PDF