Building a Microsoft Foundry hosted agent has historically meant juggling multiple surfaces — looking up a model deployment in the Foundry portal, wiring toolboxes and skills by hand, copying an endpoint into your editor, then dropping to the CLI to test and deploy. That context-switching adds friction at exactly the moment you want to be experimenting.

Today we're changing that. The Microsoft Foundry Canvas is now in public preview. With this release, the full hosted-agent workflow — discover, scaffold, configure, test, deploy — lives right beside the Copilot chat that's already writing your code.

The Foundry Canvas is a GitHub Copilot App extension that opens a visual canvas in the side panel. You make choices in the canvas, and it hands each step to Copilot with your Foundry project context already attached. Copilot writes the code and runs the commands; the canvas keeps the visual state and your workspace in sync. Here are a few things this unlocks for developers.

🧭 A project-aware canvas, one prompt away

Ask Copilot to create a Foundry hosted agent and the canvas opens automatically, connected to your project. It surfaces what's actually deployed — models, Foundry Toolboxes and their tools, project skills, and account guardrails — so you're choosing from real resources, not a static list.

To get started:

• In the GitHub Copilot App, ask Copilot: Create a Foundry hosted agent using the Foundry Canvas.
• Open the canvas project menu, sign in to Azure if you're prompted, and pick a subscription.
• Select a Foundry project. The canvas remembers your choice across reopens.

✨ Scaffold and configure without leaving the panel

Start from a generated idea with Inspire me, or begin from a Hello world sample. From there, wire the agent to a deployed model and connect any toolboxes, skills, and guardrails. Every selection becomes a project-aware prompt to Copilot, which updates the agent code for you.

To build your agent:

• Choose Inspire me for a generated starting point, or the Hello world sample prompt.
• Select a deployed model, then connect toolboxes, skills, and guardrails from your project.
• Let Copilot apply each change in your workspace as you go.

🔍 Test locally with the embedded Agent Inspector

When you're ready to try it, Inspect Locally runs the agent and embeds the Agent Inspector right in the canvas — no separate REST client, no extra tooling. Chat with the agent, and if something breaks, send the error straight back to Copilot as a fix request.

To test and deploy:

• Click Inspect Locally — the canvas runs the agent and opens the Agent Inspector on port 8088.
• Send a prompt such as Write a haiku about deploying cloud applications. and iterate.
• Click Deploy to Foundry to publish the agent to Foundry Agent Service.

Because Inspect Locally and Deploy to Foundry run the underlying Azure Developer CLI (azd) commands, you're never boxed in — drop back to the terminal whenever you want.

Hosted agents are one of the fastest-growing ways developers build on Microsoft Foundry — from internal copilots to task automation to customer-facing assistants. This release gives you a first-class, visual path to design and ship them faster, without giving up the code-first workflow you already know.

🚀 Get Started Today

Ready to build your first agent from the canvas? Here's how to jump in:

• In the GitHub Copilot App, open Settings > Plugins, search for foundry-agent-canvas, and select Install. You can also install it from the awesome-copilot listing or ask Copilot to install it into user scope.
• Ask Copilot to create a Foundry hosted agent, then follow the canvas from project pick to deploy.
• Walk through it end to end with the Deploy your first hosted agent quickstart, and read the Foundry Canvas overview for the full picture.

We'd love to hear from you! Whether it's a feature request, a bug report, or feedback on your experience, join the conversation and contribute directly on our GitHub repository.

Happy Coding!