Cost-effective strategies for AI agent development are essential for organizations looking to leverage AI technologies without incurring prohibitive expenses. One effective approach is to utilize open-source frameworks such as Rasa, Tensor Flow, and Hugging Face Transformers, which provide robust tools and libraries without the licensing costs associated with proprietary solutions. Additionally, employing pre-trained models and transfer learning can significantly reduce the time and resources needed for training, allowing developers to fine-tune existing models for specific use cases instead of starting from scratch.