An AI SDR is a sales development rep’s top-of-funnel work run by software: research, first touch, follow-up and meeting booking, with discovery calls and demos still handled by people. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and the sales agent it runs stops at a person’s approval before anything sends.
Per call: allow, ask or block · Nothing sends until you approve it · Every action is written down
The agent researches and drafts freely, but nothing goes out on its own: every follow-up stops at a human approval gate as a draft for a person to review and send. No message reaches a lead without a person reviewing the draft and sending it. Only the drafts it produces are written back out.
Hand a sales agent the research, the pre-call brief, the CRM write-back and the follow-up draft. Nothing sends until you approve it, and every action it took is written down.
Salesforce defines the term as "an AI-powered sales development representative that focuses on automating top-of-funnel activities, like lead qualification, outreach, and engagement to help sales teams focus on more creative problem-solving tasks" (Salesforce). AiSDR, which sells one, draws the boundary from the other side: "An AI SDR covers account research, first-touch outreach, follow-up, and meeting booking, the same scope as a first-quarter sales development hire, but it does not run discovery calls, demos, or closing conversations" (AiSDR).
Put the two together and the job is plain. The software researches an account, writes a first message, follows up, handles a reply and books a meeting. The demo, the pricing conversation and the close stay with a person. The two definitions draw that line in the same place.
Every product in the category sells the same loop: research, write, send and book. Feature tables differ on mailboxes, CRM syncs and languages. The loop itself barely moves.
What moves is where the software’s authority ends. One design sends for you: launch a campaign and the platform writes, queues, sends, classifies replies and books. AiSDR prices that per person contacted; Artisan runs Ava autonomous by default, with approvals you can switch on. The other design gives you the machinery and keeps a person on the outbound message. The bill follows the choice, per contact on one side and in credits on the other.
A draft costs nothing to get wrong. One that reaches a buyer cannot be recalled. Most of what goes wrong on outbound is visible in the draft, before it sends. That makes the draft the cheapest place to look.
So the question a buyer can settle before signing is narrow. When the agent has a message ready, does a person read it, and can that person see the research behind it? A tool that answers yes with a checkbox has answered with a setting. A platform that answers yes with a file in a repo has answered with a rule. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and its sales agent is built the second way.
On a sales flow the same rule covers a HubSpot read and a Gmail send: the read can run, the send can wait, and the approval belongs to the address the call was given.
Rule each tool call allow, ask or block — down to the arguments it was givenSay allow, ask or deny per tool — down to a single shell commandConnector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machineSource: https://kortix.com
Kortix cells come from its docs and published sales flow; each rival cell comes from that vendor’s own page, checked October 2026.
| Product | What it is | Open source | Who presses send | Where the rules live | Where it runs | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kortix | Open-source AI Operating System that runs a sales agent you own | Yes | A person; every follow-up stops at an approval gate | Files in your repo: allow, ask or block per call | Kortix Cloud, your VPC, or your on-prem network | The paid plan is credits, from $50 a month |
| AiSDR | Managed AI SDR running email and LinkedIn sequences for you | No | Ami builds the campaign and runs it | In AiSDR’s platform: pause outbound any time | AiSDR’s hosted platform | $1.50 per person contacted; built for 1,000+ a month |
| Artisan | Managed AI BDR; Ava writes, sends and books meetings | No | Ava sends by default; approve before sending is a setting | In Artisan: approvals, escalation rules, banned phrases | Artisan’s platform, from your own sending domains | No published rate; a quote sized to lead volume and seats |
| Agentforce | Salesforce’s AI SDR, built on Agentforce and Agent Builder | No | The agent sends follow-ups on its own, around the clock | Instructions and guardrails set in Agent Builder | Salesforce Customer 360, on Salesforce’s cloud | $500 per 100,000 Flex Credits; each action metered |
Rival cells come from each vendor’s own pricing or product page, checked October 2026: AiSDR’s pricing page, Artisan’s pricing page and Salesforce’s AI SDR page and Agentforce pricing page. Kortix cells come from its docs and the lead follow-up flow it publishes.
AiSDR’s guide to the category carries its own post-mortem: "Most failed AI SDR rollouts collapse within 9 weeks, driven mainly by generic copy, missing deliverability infrastructure, stale contact lists, or teams expecting a full rep replacement instead of a capacity multiplier" (AiSDR). Salesforce, which sells Agentforce, is candid about the harder direction: "Fully autonomous, end-to-end outbound motions are more complex for AI SDRs", and "the most sophisticated AI SDRs today are better suited to tackling inbound leads" (Salesforce).
The four causes deserve a slow read. Two are about the list and the mailboxes, which a buyer can test before the first campaign. Two are about copy and expectation, which are decisions a team makes and can describe in advance. A stronger model settles none of them. A person reading the draft can catch a stale contact and a generic line before a buyer does.
Kortix publishes the flow it runs on its own inbound leads. The useful part is how much the agent does before the gate. A scheduled trigger sweeps HubSpot every 15 minutes, and each firing gets a fresh session in its own sandbox. The agent reads the lead, researches the company, writes research notes back to the record, drafts the follow-up and proposes a real calendar slot. Then it stops with a draft for a person to review and send.
The flow sits under a per-tool rule: allow, ask or block for each call, down to the arguments it was given. A CRM read can run on its own and a send can wait. Because the approval is tied to those arguments, an address swapped after review needs a fresh one. A team gets the research and the drafting at machine speed, and the buyer still meets a message a person read.
The gate is published behaviour. Kortix’s sales page puts it in one sentence: "Nothing sends until you approve it, and every action it took is written down" (Kortix). The rules that decide which call runs live in the repo the agent runs from. A change to the copy standard or the send policy arrives as a diff somebody merged.
A managed AI SDR is the right buy when the campaign itself is the deliverable and the vendor holding the sending inbox is fine. When the research is the part a team wants automated and the send is the part it keeps, Kortix is the platform that holds both.
Short answers on the definition, the price, and whether the role survives.
An AI SDR is software that runs the top of a sales funnel: account research, first-touch outreach, follow-up, reply handling and meeting booking. Salesforce defines it as an AI-powered sales development representative automating top-of-funnel work, with discovery calls, demos and closing left to people.
Most AI SDR platforms cost $200 to $5,000 a month, and AiSDR bills $1.50 per person contacted. Kortix’s free plan is $0 with 500 credits per month, every feature and 1 project, on your own provider keys or a ChatGPT subscription. Managed models are on the Credits plan only. The paid plan is credits, from $50 a month.
No. Salesforce says an AI SDR’s job is not to replace the humans on a sales team, and AiSDR lists the expectation of a full rep replacement as one reason rollouts fail. Research and follow-up go to software; discovery, demos and closing stay with people.
On inbound leads they do, which is where Salesforce says today’s most sophisticated tools fit best. On outbound, AiSDR reports most failed rollouts collapse within 9 weeks, usually over generic copy, weak deliverability, stale lists or replacement expectations. A person on the send catches the copy and the list.
Start with new-lead follow-up, one rule on the send step, and a person reading the draft.