Dev.to
7/31/2026

How to Evaluate an AI Agent Vendor Before You Sign
Short summary
A practical 12-question checklist for evaluating AI agent vendors before signing, emphasizing failure handling over polished demos. Key areas cover agent-vs-workflow justification, cost scaling, data security, code ownership, and rollback planning. The author recommends comparing three proposals and favoring vendors who explain trade-offs over those with slick decks.
- •Score vendors on failure handling, not demo polish
- •12 questions spanning scope, cost, security, ownership, and rollback
- •Compare three proposals; prefer vendors who say 'it depends' with reasoning
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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