Microsoft Releases Managed Copilot Harness for Building AI Agents on Foundry

At a glance

Microsoft has released a public preview of the Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service. A harness is an execution framework that helps AI agents carry out multi-step tasks through to the end. Its feature for handling long-running tasks reliably has launched as a full release.

Key points

1. 1

   Developers can create an agent simply by choosing the model, knowledge, and tools they want, without building the execution process themselves.

2. 2

   It includes reusable skill bundles, connections to external tools (such as MCP), file and code work, and delegation to sub-agents.

3. 3

   Agent definitions can be version-controlled along with code.

4. 4

   The long-running task resilience feature has been officially released.

Why it matters

The platform takes over the complex execution structure that is repeatedly needed when building AI agents, so companies and developers can focus on real-world job performance.