What is a vertical AI agent?
A vertical AI agent is an AI agent built for one business process, such as procurement, legal, finance or supply chain, that takes actions in the systems of that domain: it creates purchase orders, files documents, posts entries or places replenishment orders. It is judged by the records it leaves behind, not only by its answers.
How it differs from a general assistant
A general chat assistant is judged mostly on its answers. A vertical agent is judged on outcomes in a specific process, often with money, contracts or compliance attached. It works in the customer's own systems: ERP and procurement suites, practice management systems, CRM and billing.
Typical errors by vertical
| Vertical | Example error |
|---|---|
| Procurement | A request for 40 boxes saved as 40 pieces |
| Legal | A letter filed to a client with a similar name |
| Finance | A credit booked as a debit |
| Supply chain | A delivery date entered as a ship date |
How to test one
Run its real workflow in a test environment, read back the data it wrote, and check it against the rules of the domain: wrong data, a false "done", duplicate writes, partial writes and regressions since the last release. See release gates for vertical AI agents.
On the blog
- How to test vertical AI agents
- How to test AI procurement agents
- How to test legal AI agents
- Testing AI finance agents
- Testing supply chain AI agents
Related terms
Wrong data · Prompt injection testing · AI Quality System · All terms
FAQ
Procurement agents that create purchase orders, legal agents that file documents and enter deadlines, finance agents that post entries and issue refunds, and supply chain agents that place replenishment orders.
Because they are judged on outcomes in a business process. Generic LLM evals usually stop at the answer; a vertical agent has to be checked on what it wrote.
With the tasks where a wrong write costs the most in your domain, run before each release and checked in the connected system.
Try it on your own agent
Describe a task in plain words. Agentiqa does it step by step and tells you if it worked. Every failure comes with step-by-step reproduction.
20 runs a month, no credit card.
Your agent writes into ERP, CRM or billing for customers? See Enterprise.