# AI Automation Agency UK > UK AI automation agency building workflows that run on their own: document processing, scraping, lead enrichment and briefings, with retries, human review and monitoring. Source: https://pixelhop.io/services/ai-automation/ --- AI automation agency · UK # AI automation agency for UK businesses AI automations that just run. An AI automation agency in Newquay, Cornwall, building production automations for UK businesses. Document processing, scraping, lead enrichment and briefings, built to keep running. [Talk to us](https://pixelhop.io/contact/) What you get ## Everything an AI automation needs to actually run. A production automation has to keep running on its own, recover when something upstream breaks, and tell you when it can't. That takes more than a workflow wired up on a Friday afternoon. Here's what we deliver. 01 ### A working production pipeline Triggers, actions, and the glue between them, deployed to your stack and running on real data. Built with Mastra for LLM-heavy workflows, or bespoke code on a Bull Queue worker when the job calls for it. 02 ### Queues, retries, and idempotency Every external API will fail eventually. We design for it: proper queueing under spikes, exponential backoff, dead-letter queues, and idempotent steps so a retry can't double-charge a customer or duplicate a record. 03 ### Logging, observability, and alerts A run history you can actually read. What triggered, what happened at each step, what every API call returned, how long it took. Plus Slack or email alerts when a pipeline fails, slows down, or starts producing weird output. Silent failures are the worst kind. 04 ### Human-in-the-loop checkpoints Some steps shouldn't run unattended (payments, content going public, records being deleted, customer-facing messages). We build review queues so a person signs off before the pipeline continues. The automation handles the routine cases; the edges land somewhere obvious. 05 ### A cost dashboard Per-pipeline visibility on API spend, model tokens, and platform fees. So when a workflow scales you know whether it's still earning its keep, and you spot runaway costs before the invoice does. 06 ### Ongoing maintenance SaaS APIs change, auth tokens expire, schemas drift, models get deprecated. We support and update the pipelines after launch, with pricing that reflects an ongoing relationship rather than a one-shot project. #### 01: Discovery Refine your ideas and plan what will be launched in 6 weeks. #### 02: Kick-off We get cracking. Design, code, and AI work happen in parallel from day one. #### 03: Check-in On week 3 get ready for an exciting demo of progress. #### 04: Build & Iterate Continue work and integrate feedback from the check-in. #### 05: Pre-launch A check-in before launch to tie up loose ends and get ready. #### 06: Launch The big day is here, you idea is launched to the whole world. ### How we work ## 6 week product cycles that always launch. Build your vision with our 6-week product cycles. A small senior team, AI-amplified end-to-end, geared up to launch your idea in six weeks. Why 6 Weeks? It's the Goldilocks Zone - Striking the perfect balance between allowing enough time to build something meaningful, while being short enough to keep risks low! Whether its an MVP, prototype, or feature in a existing product, our 6 week cycles make sure you have something tangible at the end of the project. [Sounds cool! Tell me more](https://pixelhop.io/how-we-work/) #### 01: Discovery Refine your ideas and plan what will be launched in 6 weeks. #### 02: Kick-off We get cracking. Design, code, and AI work happen in parallel from day one. #### 03: Check-in On week 3 get ready for an exciting demo of progress. #### 04: Build & Iterate Continue work and integrate feedback from the check-in. #### 05: Pre-launch A check-in before launch to tie up loose ends and get ready. #### 06: Launch The big day is here, you idea is launched to the whole world. Use cases ## AI automation services we build. - 01 ### Document processing and analysis Inbound documents (invoices, contracts, claims, CVs, PDFs) get OCR'd, parsed, classified, and turned into structured data that lands in the right system. The edge cases go to a human queue; everything else posts on its own. If the documents feed a product your customers use, see our [AI integration services](https://pixelhop.io/services/ai-integration/). - 02 ### Web scraping and monitoring Pull data from sites that don't have an API, on a schedule. Competitor pricing, regulatory changes, product listings, public records: collected, normalised, and piped into your stack. We handle the anti-bot rules and the HTML changes that always come. - 03 ### Lead enrichment and routing New leads get enriched from third-party data sources, scored against your ICP, and routed to the right rep or sequence in your CRM. Sales stops sorting inboxes; the pipeline does it. - 04 ### Newsletters and daily briefings Daily, weekly, or monthly digests pulled from your data warehouse, product analytics, news feeds, or wherever. Summarised by an LLM and delivered to Slack, email, or a newsletter your customers actually open. The standing meeting becomes a post. - 05 ### Content moderation User-generated content gets classified, flagged, and routed in real time (spam, toxicity, off-policy material), with the borderline cases going to a human queue. Tuned to your own policy rather than a generic model's defaults. - [Got something different?](https://pixelhop.io/contact/): + Tell us about your use case. We'll come back with a straight answer about whether it's something we can help build. If the work needs judgement and actions rather than a fixed pipeline, look at [AI agent development](https://pixelhop.io/services/ai-agents/). Recent work ## Real automations, in production. We run our own automation pipelines alongside client work, and every lesson about flaky APIs, retry logic, queue tuning, and cost control gets folded back into what we ship for you. [All work](https://pixelhop.io/our-work/) [Chat Thing](https://pixelhop.io/our-work/chat-thing/): Design AI Development Chat Thing is our first in house product that allows users to create magic AI chatbots [Orbit: AI grant scraping for Grants Online](https://pixelhop.io/our-work/orbit-ai-grant-scraping-for-grants-online/): AI Automations AI agents An AI grant scraping pipeline that turned a year of manual review into minutes per grant. Writing ## What we've learned building it. [All writing](https://pixelhop.io/writing/) [I didn't plan this SEO pipeline, it kind of grew itself](https://pixelhop.io/writing/i-didnt-plan-this-seo-pipeline-it-kind-of-grew-itself/): 01 JUN 2026 · AI I do SEO work for a few clients, and the monthly report is the thing they actually pay for. For ages I was hand assembling it.. which is fine once, miserable every month. This post is about how that turned into a little pipeline of Claude skills and scripts, and how each piece quietly made the next one easier to build. People call this compound engineering and honestly the name fits. Chris [We built free AI tools for SEO, then realised they could generate leads too](https://pixelhop.io/writing/free-ai-tools-for-seo-then-realised-they-could-generate-leads-too/): 09 SEPT 2026 · AI How a free SEO checker started surfacing potential leads, and the human-reviewed Glitch workflow we built around it. Gemma [Five lessons from using Glitch to find businesses and set up Instantly](https://pixelhop.io/writing/five-lessons-from-using-glitch-to-find-businesses-and-set-up-instantly/): 07 SEPT 2026 · AI What Pixelhop learned when Glitch missed a known-good business and configured an Instantly follow-up incorrectly. Gemma Pricing ## What it costs. Most builds run in six-week cycles at £34,000 + VAT. That's a small senior team designing, building and launching one clear outcome. Most automations fit in one cycle; bigger products run over two or three. Smaller one-off jobs are quoted individually at our day rate of £650 + VAT, even if it's only a couple of days' work. Not sure what you need yet? We start with a [discovery week](https://pixelhop.io/project-discovery/) (£3,250 + VAT) and finish it with a fixed-price proposal for the build. After launch, many of our clients stay with us on a monthly retainer for support and improvements. Model, API and hosting costs are separate, and you can see them on the cost dashboard from day one. For real project numbers and what an AI system costs to run each month, read [how much AI development costs](https://pixelhop.io/writing/how-much-does-ai-development-cost/). To see our prices next to 28 other UK AI agencies, read [UK AI agencies compared](https://pixelhop.io/compare/ai-agencies-uk/). [Start a project](https://pixelhop.io/project-discovery/) FAQs ## AI automation FAQs. How long does it take to build an AI automation? A simple trigger-to-action pipeline can be live in days. A multi-step workflow with proper queueing, error handling, observability, and a few SaaS integrations typically runs 2 to 6 weeks, depending on how many systems it touches and how strict the reliability bar is. What tools and frameworks do you use? For LLM-heavy workflows we typically reach for Mastra. Its evals, observability, and step graph fit the way we work. For bespoke pipelines we run our own code on Bull Queue (Redis-backed) so we get proper queueing, retries, and concurrency control. n8n, Zapier, or Make show up where the speed of building outweighs the platform fees and the logic stays simple. We pick based on cost, reliability, and how easy it'll be to maintain. How do you handle errors and retries? Every step that touches an external API gets queued, retried with exponential backoff, and designed to be idempotent so a retry can't cause duplicate side effects. Anything that still fails lands in a dead-letter queue with the full context, and you get an alert, so nothing fails silently. Do you build human-in-the-loop steps into automations? Often. For anything where a wrong call costs you (payments, content going public, records being deleted, customer-facing comms), we build review queues. The automation handles the routine cases; the edges land in a queue, a person signs off, and the pipeline picks up where it left off. Where you draw the line between auto and review is part of the design conversation. Do you support automations after launch? Yes. SaaS APIs rotate auth, deprecate endpoints and drift schemas, so automations need looking after. Most engagements include an ongoing support arrangement: monitoring, fixes when something upstream changes, and tweaks as your process evolves. When shouldn't we automate this? If a task is rare, changes every time, or a simple rule would handle it, an AI automation probably isn't worth building. We'll say so in the first conversation. Sometimes the right answer is an off-the-shelf tool or a spreadsheet formula. How much does it cost? Most projects fit in one six-week cycle at £34,000 + VAT. Smaller jobs are quoted at our day rate of £650 + VAT, and a discovery week is £3,250 + VAT. See [What it costs](#what-it-costs) for the detail. Do you work with businesses outside Cornwall? Yes. We're based in Newquay, and most of our clients are elsewhere in the UK. We work remotely, with the kick-off, week-three check-in and launch on video calls. How do you handle our data? We're UK GDPR compliant. At the start of a project we agree what personal data the work needs, where it's stored and who can access it, and we build to that. Now booking ## Got something boring to hand off? Tell us what you're trying to ship. We'll come back with a straight answer. [Start a conversation](https://pixelhop.io/contact/)