I think there is going to be a massive opportunity in the next couple of years setting up AI agents for small to medium sized businesses.
Just like all businesses got around to making a website once they realized how powerful the internet is, they will do the same once they realize how much money they can save by automating parts of their business using AI agents.
I’ve been talking a lot about this with a friend of mine recently. I’ve been telling him I think he should do it when the time comes. So I wanted to demonstrate to him how easy it is to set up a website and start automating content production so that the website starts positioning itself in Google and ChatGPT, Claude and the other big AIs.
This article outlines the steps I took to build it and the cost of each step.
Step 1: Coming up with a name
Let’s start nice and easy with a name for this new company. I went to ChatGPT 5.4 for that because I find it’s the best model for writing and coming up with ideas like this.
I gave ChatGPT some direction and explained that we would be serving a French and English market with this company, and the name should kind of mean something in both languages.
After a few iterations, we settled on the name Avenira. For those that don’t speak French, “avenir” means future in French and I thought this name had a nice ring to it. The .ai domain was available for it so I settled on this as the name.
Cost of this step:
$20 per month for my ChatGPT subscription
$105 for the avenira.ai domain for 1 year (damn .ai domains are expensive!)
20 minutes of my time
Step 2: Planning the project
I don’t like to plan projects with CofounderGPT directly any more because he runs on the Anthropic API now so we have to pay for every token that we use. Also, I find that Claude has an excellent planning mode built in which CofounderGPT does not.
So I went to Claude and using Opus 4.6 Extended, I explained all the requirements of the project. Specifically, I asked Claude to research if there are already companies doing this, to research what types of automations are people already doing in the SMBs today and to come up with an offering for Avenira.
After the research was completed, we went back-and-forth a bit on the offering, and decided it was best to focus on more local businesses for now. Our website will be targeting Montreal and Quebec businesses, which means we will need an English and French version of the website. We’ll just have one main landing page, and a few small subpages for now. And of course, we need a blog on which we will be publishing content regularly. So once again, I decided to go with Ghost for this project.
Then, I asked Claude to write a detailed specification of everything we discussed, all the pages that need to go on the website, the branding guidelines, the purpose of this project and all the decisions we made about how to build this website.
With the detailed specifications in hand, I went back to CofounderGPT to actually build this.
Cost of this step:
$20 per month for my Claude subscription
About 1 hour of my time
Step 3: Designing the website
I created a Trello card for this project for CofounderGPT and I included the specifications and some additional information about how we’re going to build the website.
First, CofounderGPT had to read through the specs and understand what we’re going to build. Then we started working on the design.
The first few iterations felt like CofounderGPT was being lazy and I had to push to get better results. We ended up with an ok website after 5 rounds of iterations. And then we went through a bunch of iterations for the illustrations and visuals. CofounderGPT really struggled here and after a while, I just settled on subpar illustrations. It’s not like I’m super happy with the overall design, but its good enough for us to start positioning this “company” in Google. And I don’t want to waste too much time and tokens on this part of the project, we need to move quickly.
Cost of this step:
$50.45 in Opus 4.6 API costs
4 scattered hours of my time. About 1.5 hours if I sat and did it in one shot.
Step 4: Creating tasks
Now that we’ve completed the design and have the spec, I asked CofounderGPT to break this project up into steps, and then create tasks for each step in Trello. And then I asked him to review each of the steps to make sure nothing is missing and that there are no gaps.
Cost of this step:
$8.28 in Opus 4.6 API costs
5 minutes of my time
Step 5: Getting Ghost and the server ready
The main reason we went with Ghost as our CMS to begin with and again in this project, is that I can rely on CofounderGPT to do the entire installation and set up on his own. I used to work with servers in a previous life at Cloud Horizon and suffice it to say, I never want to look at a terminal to connect to a server again. So the fact that CofounderGPT can do the entire server setup on his own is amazing!
One of the tasks on the list that CofounderGPT created in Trello is the server and ghost set-up. We already have a server for CofounderGPT.ai, so we decided to put this project on the same server. But this was one the longest and hardest steps out of all the tasks that CofounderGPT created so it deserved its own section.
Cost of this step:
$15.18 in Opus 4.6 API costs
0 minutes of my time, CofounderGPT just did it without any input from me
Step 6: Design Implementation
The other long and more costly step from Trello was the design implementation step. CofounderGPT took the design we created in Step 3, converted it to a Ghost theme and then implemented it on the Ghost installation that he did in Step 5.
I gave some initial feedback along the way for some obvious mistakes that were made. And I made CofounderGPT review his work one time before proceeding to the next step.
Cost of this step:
$28.32 in Opus 4.6 API costs
About 15 minutes of my time providing feedback and guidance
Step 7: Quality Assurance
The final step of this mini-project was the quality assurance. Basically, I had CofounderGPT run through the website and check it through different browsers and in different screen sizes (mobile, desktop, iPad, etc.).
We did two QA passes, the first of which found 15 issues and improvements (4 of which came from me) and then the second pass found an additional 7 issues which were all identified by CofounderGPT.
Cost of this step:
$21.63 in Opus 4.6 API costs
About 30 minutes of my time providing feedback and guidance
Step 8: Final Touchups
Step 7 was not really the last step, there are always a few minor things to do when working on a website that actually don’t have anything to do with the design or implementation of the website.
In this case, I wanted to add a Privacy Policy, Google analytics and Google Search Console. If the goal of this website is to attract leads to help my friend get his business off the ground, then we need to monitor performance of the website using Google’s free tools.
We already have a pretty decent privacy policy on the Vacation Tracker website, so I just cloned that and adapted it for Avenira. I also have Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts for all our other projects, so I just created new properties for Avenira there.
Cost of this step:
$9.37 in Opus 4.6 API costs
About 30 minutes of my time providing feedback, getting the Google tags and making sure they are installed correctly
Putting it all together
The final product came out pretty decent considering I was working on this part-time and in parallel with other tasks over 1 working day.
So what is the cost to make an English and French website for a small consulting business in 2026 using an AI agent like CofounderGPT?
🥁
Final tally:
Step 1: $125, 20 minutes
Step 2: $20, 1 hour
Step 3: $50.45, 4 scattered hours (about 1.5 hours if I sat and did it in one shot)
Step 4: $8.28, 5 minutes
Step 5: $15.18, 0 minutes
Step 6: $28.32, 15 minutes
Step 7: $21.63, 30 minutes
Step 8: $9.37, 30 minutes
Total cash cost: $278.23
Total human time: 6 hours and 40 minutes scattered across the day. If I had sat down and done it in one shot, probably closer to 4 hours and 10 minutes.
That $278.23 includes the full monthly cost of ChatGPT and Claude, the Avenira.ai domain, and the Opus API costs. If we look only at the direct Opus API usage, CofounderGPT cost me $133.23 to do the actual build work.
When I was running Cloud Horizon 10 years ago, a project like this might have taken a small team 2 weeks to do and cost about $3k-$4k USD. And honestly, that might be generous once you include planning, design, implementation, server setup, QA, analytics, Search Console, privacy policy, and all the little annoying stuff that always shows up at the end.
In 2026, I did it on my own in 1 day, part-time, with the help of an AI agent.
This is why I think the opportunity to build AI agents for SMBs is massive. Most businesses don’t need science fiction. They need someone to look at the work they already do, identify the repetitive pieces, and build systems that quietly handle them.
That’s what this little Avenira project was really meant to prove.
