More powerful agents and workflows for autonomous business processes: Introducing a new harness for Copilot Studio

Ryan, I applaud your team on the hard work you all have done. I'm sure through the preview your team has learned as much as we have, perhaps a big one being the sheer cost of powering these incredible models and the outcomes they can create.

That said, I write here to ask for a reconsideration of the branding structure. Copilot is a brand embedded in the notion of a helpful sidebar or chat agent. Copilot Studio is a maker low-code brand, rooted in the 365 ecosystem. This new "GitHub Harness" branding, a developer brand, muddies the waters. I can't make it intellectually or emotionally fit with Copilot Studio. Your own blog piece above, however, offers a solution.

You say this new GitHub Harness technology is what powers Copilot Cowork? Fantastic. Guess what you're creating with Copilot Studio when you choose it? A Copilot Cowork Agent. The natural next autonomous step from Copilot Agents, the type of agent you now call Standard Harness Agents.

Forgive me while I use these new brands as I continue to describe them; if nothing else, I hope you will see how natural they sound. Copilot Cowork Agents and Copilot Agents overlap somewhat in capability, but truly support distinctly different production scenarios.

Copilot Agents provide helpful smart chat agents, what you use to quickly guide customers as a virtual customer service rep. Or provide quick answers to folks on a Teams call. Or through M365 Copilot Chat, allow for completion of impressive yet somewhat light tasks. Due to the "help in the moment" nature of Copilot Agents, they can be deployed on websites, in Teams, in M365 Copilot Chat, and also in various other social and communication platforms. Doubling down on their helpful nature, they can also be offered to customers on other Microsoft 365 tenants, projecting helpful support beyond the boundaries of one's own tenant and into another.

Copilot Cowork Agents are agents that take a general mandate, reason multiple steps necessary for completion, and then execute and complete what is asked for, even if it means writing and executing a whole program! While they often have a chat front-end for helping users think through what to eventually ask for, their strength isn't in what it does in a chat but what it does while their master(s) get something else accomplished. Due to Copilot Cowork Agents' impressive computational needs, unlike Copilot Agents, they are billed as a metered capacity and generally aren't designed to be externally facing. However, compared to the cost of manually doing everything Copilot Cowork Agents do, the price for running them can be trivial compared to the time and money they save.

There you have it. Two solid brands that don't cannibalize each other and succeed in conveying that the new product serving a different need won't be tossing out the old product that has a valued different place in our toolchest.

In the name of all the good work your team has done, I request that Copilot Agents replace "Standard Harness Agents" and Copilot Cowork Agents replace "GitHub Harness Agents". Your outstanding work deserves outstanding branding ;)

I am at your disposal if you wish to discuss.

Thanks,

Paul