Microsoft rebuilds Copilot around Office, apps and an agent

Microsoft is reorganizing its workplace Copilot app around three new pieces, the company said Friday in a blog post. Home combines quick chat and delegated work in one place and, Microsoft says, puts the full power of Word, Excel and PowerPoint inside Copilot. Code lets people who aren’t developers describe an app or dashboard and have Copilot build it. Autopilot is an agent that runs in the cloud and, in Microsoft’s words, “keeps working even when you’re not.” Microsoft is also splitting how customers pay: everyday Copilot stays on a fixed-cost per-user license, and the agent features run on usage-based billing.

Home and Office in Copilot. Home is the new starting screen. It brings together Chat, for quick questions and drafts, and Cowork, for tasks that are handed off and run end to end, such as an RFP response or a financial close package. Microsoft says that “coming soon,” Copilot will pick the right mode on its own. With Office in Copilot, Microsoft says, asking for a launch brief, a budget model or a deck produces a real, editable Word document, Excel workbook or PowerPoint file that teammates can edit live, and changes stay in sync with the regular Office apps.

Code. Microsoft pitches small, purpose-built tools as a fourth unit of knowledge work, after the document, the spreadsheet and the deck. A user describes a tracker, dashboard, automation or internal app in plain language, and Copilot builds it. The result can be anything from a desktop widget to a cloud-hosted app the team can share. Microsoft says Code uses the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, runs in a sandbox and can be hosted within a company’s own tenant. Developers keep using GitHub Copilot. Microsoft is also previewing Copilot Managed Runtime, a hosting service that runs such apps inside a company’s Microsoft 365 environment, and says it will be accessible inside Code.

Autopilot. Autopilot was previously called Scout. Its user gives it a name, a role and a goal. According to Microsoft, it then watches channels, follows up on threads, runs recurring work and picks a project back up days later without waiting for a prompt. Microsoft’s example is running a full supplier review, from building the schedule through meetings and follow-ups, including reaching out to stakeholders. Autopilot lives in the company’s tenant with its own identity, memory, computer and workspace. It shows up in Teams and Outlook, where people can @mention it, and it runs under the company’s permissions, audit and governance controls, Microsoft says.

How it’s billed. Microsoft’s post gives no prices. It says a fixed-cost user subscription license covers Copilot in Chat and across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, along with model selection and Auto, which routes each request to a model. Usage-based billing covers Cowork, Code, Autopilot, other new long-running agent features, and frontier models such as Astra and Fable. New admin tools let companies set spending policies, route users’ credit requests into approval workflows and limit which model families each group can use. Users can see their own credit balance and usage history inside Copilot.

When: The post opens by saying Home and Code will start rolling out in Microsoft’s early-access Frontier program “in the coming weeks.” The Code section then says Code reaches Frontier “at the end of the month,” with broad availability in the coming weeks and a preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year. Autopilot is “expanding to private preview at the end of the month.”

Who for: Companies already on Microsoft 365 Copilot, especially teams that want to hand off multi-step work or build internal tools without waiting on engineering.

Replaces: Copying Copilot chat output into Office by hand, filing small internal-tool requests with IT, and chasing recurring follow-ups manually.

Risks: Agent work is now billed by use, so heavy use of Cowork, Code or Autopilot can push bills up in ways a fixed license does not. An agent that contacts colleagues and acts unprompted needs tight boundaries. Most of this is in early access or private preview, not generally available.

— Rowan Keel