From Pilots to Agents

A Practical Maturity Model for Building with AI

Author

Karan Shah
September 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with dozens of founders and product builders. The theme is the same:

  • Everyone is curious about AI agents.

  • Few know where to start.

  • Most are overwhelmed: “too complex,” “too risky,” “what if it replaces us?”

And so, 95% of GenAI pilots fail. (MIT’s number, not mine).

Over the weekend, I gave a talk about AI agents and SEO, but what I really presented was a framework for adopting AI agents from scratch to going into production.

Teams stall because they think AI means jumping straight to “autonomous agents running the show.”

That’s like buying a race car before learning how to drive stick!

You don’t need to “do it all.” You just need a maturity path.

That’s where the AI Agent Maturity Ladder comes in.

The Four Stages of AI Agent Adoption

Prove (crawl)

  • Run small, low-risk pilots with off-the-shelf tools (In case of SEO tools: ChatGPT, Jasper, Claude)

  • Build a prompt library, and test on a few workflows

  • Keep it draft-only; always human-in-loop

    Screen grab from my Jasper account

Pipeline (walk)

  • Connect the pipes, and give your AI agent context about everything you can

  • Automate repetitive steps

  • Tools like Zapier, Make, or n8n move data between systems

  • Output still requires human review, but copy-paste is gone

an AI Agent at phase 2, edging on Agentic

Agentic (run)

  • Introduce frameworks (CrewAI, LangGraph, LangChain).

  • Give agents roles: researcher, writer, tester, support rep.

  • Add memory (Qdrant, Pinecone) so they retain context.

  • Human signs off, but agents now coordinate.

Iterate (flywheel)

  • Add monitoring, evaluation, and version control.

  • Track quality scores, reduce rework, and run A/B tests.

  • Your agents become part of the system, improving every cycle.

The Philosophy That Makes It Work

Automate the soul-crushing stuff:

  • Repetitive analysis

  • Briefs and outlines

  • Internal linking

  • Schema generation

Keep humans for human stuff:

  • Brand POV and strategy

  • Actual creativity (not "rearranging words creatively")

  • Ethics and risk decisions

  • Final editorial judgment

The goal isn't to replace humans. It's to free humans from doing robot work so they can do human work.

Why This Matters for Builders

This isn’t about SEO, or sales, or support.

It’s about how you integrate AI responsibly into products and teams.

• Skip the ladder → you risk “AI slop” or broken workflows.

• Climb the ladder → you build durable, compounding systems.

The winners won’t be those who ship the most AI features.

They’ll be the ones who ship AI with guardrails, KPIs, and iteration loops.

Your Next Action

Pick ONE thing from Stage 1 this week:

  • Create a reusable prompt template for your most common task (e.g., user support, product copy, feature specs).

  • Set up a simple tracker (Notion, Sheet, Airtable) to compare AI-assisted vs manual work.

  • Run a 3–5 task experiment (emails, tickets, briefs, user flows) using the same template.

That’s it.

No custom frameworks.

No complex orchestration.

No six-figure software purchases.

Just prove it works at the smallest viable scale.

While not everything is in here, but here is a glimpse of my deck. Just respond to this email if you want it.

My deck - shoot me an email if you want it

Why I’m Writing This

I started "Brew. Build. Breakthrough." a few weeks ago: a newsletter where I share honest takes, experiments, and practical frameworks around building products at the intersection of AI, design, and engineering.

If you’re a founder, product leader, or builder navigating this new era, you’ll find plenty here to brew over.

About me

Working from the Mountains

Karan Shah: Engineer turned Founder

15 years ago, I started my career as a software engineer. Took the entrepreneurial plunge with less than 5 years of work experience.

Since then, I’ve strived to work at the intersection of Product Engineering, Design, Marketing, and Sales.

I’ve had the pleasure to work with some of the fastest-growing startups and large enterprises alike. From creating MVPs and clients raising funds to large enterprises going for an IPO!

Brew. Build. Breakthrough.

Karan Shah
Founder & CEO, SoluteLabs
Building AI-native products before it became cool.

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