MC1446644 – M365 Change Digest

One-line summary

GitHub Copilot harness is now generally available in Copilot Studio, enabling advanced agent workflows with usage-based billing via Copilot Credits, starting August 3, 2026.

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Details

Summary

Microsoft Copilot Studio now generally offers the GitHub Copilot harness for building autonomous agents and workflows, starting August 3, 2026. This multi-harness platform supports advanced reasoning and billing via Copilot Credits, with no changes to existing agents. Administrators should review deployments, billing, and governance accordingly.

Body (from Message Center)

[What and why]

We're announcing the general availability (GA) of the GitHub Copilot harness in Microsoft Copilot Studio, previously available in Public Preview as the new Copilot Studio experience. Beginning August 3, 2026, organizations will be able to build and run agents and workflows powered by the GitHub Copilot harness directly within Copilot Studio.

With this release, Copilot Studio evolves into a multi-harness platform, allowing makers to choose the harness best suited to their scenario. A harness provides the underlying reasoning, planning, and tool orchestration framework that determines how an agent operates.

Available harnesses in Copilot Studio include:

GitHub Copilot harness, which supports autonomous business processes, workflow orchestration, and agentic scenarios
Standard harness, which is used by most agents in Copilot Studio today and supports conversational agents with rules-based topics
Copilot Chat harness, which uses the same harness as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and is designed for customizing Copilot Chat experiences

Existing Copilot Studio agents and deployments will continue to function as they do today. No existing agents will be modified or migrated to a different harness as part of this rollout.

[Rollout schedule]

General Availability (Worldwide): Beginning on August 3, 2026

[Impact on your organization]

Who is affected

Copilot Studio makers and administrators
Organizations building custom agents and workflows in Copilot Studio
Microsoft 365 Copilot customers evaluating advanced agentic scenarios

Platforms and services

Microsoft Copilot Studio
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Power Platform admin center (PPAC)

What will happen

Beginning August 3, 2026:

The Copilot Studio home experience will be updated to include the GitHub Copilot harness as a new authoring option for agents and workflows.
Makers can create agents and workflows using visual workflow orchestration, planning capabilities, and reasoning experiences powered by the GitHub Copilot harness.
The GitHub Copilot harness introduces a usage-based billing model that uses Copilot Credits. Charges may apply for both maker creation activities and runtime execution. For licensing details, review the Copilot Credits licensing guide (PDF).
Existing Copilot Chat harness and Standard harness agents will continue to function without change and remain accessible from 'Other ways to build'.
The Copilot Chat harness and Standard harness will maintain their current licensing and billing models. There are no changes to the Microsoft 365 Copilot entitlement for Copilot Chat harness agents or Standard harness agents.
Billing for all Copilot Studio harnesses (including GitHub Copilot) will be available through Power Platform admin center (PPAC).

Grace period for existing agents and workflows created using the GitHub Copilot harness:

Agents and workflows created before August 3, 2026, will begin consuming Copilot Credits under the GitHub Copilot harness usage-based billing model on September 1, 2026. Makers will receive in-product notifications indicating that the agent or workflow is in a grace period before billing enforcement begins.
Agents and workflows created on or after August 3, 2026, will begin consuming Copilot Credits under the GitHub Copilot harness usage-based billing model on August 3, 2026.

[Action required and recommendations]

No action is required for existing Copilot Studio deployments.

We recommend that administrators:

Review current Copilot Studio deployments and identify scenarios that could benefit from advanced reasoning and workflow orchestration capabilities.
Familiarize makers and administrators with the GitHub Copilot harness usage-based billing model.
Review cost management capabilities available through Power Platform admin center (PPAC). Learn more: Manage Copilot Studio credits and capacity
Review expected Copilot Credits consumption before deploying GitHub Copilot harness agents in production.
Update internal governance, training, and adoption materials to reflect the new multi-harness experience.

Learn more

[Compliance considerations]

Issue	Explanation
Generative AI capability	The GitHub Copilot harness introduces advanced AI-powered agent creation, reasoning, planning, and workflow execution capabilities. Organizations may want to review internal AI governance requirements prior to adoption.
New billing and consumption model	GitHub Copilot harness workloads use usage-based billing through Copilot Credits. Organizations should review budget and cost-management processes.
Admin controls	Cost management controls are available through Power Platform admin center.
User access	Access is governed through existing Copilot Studio permissions. The launch does not introduce a separate per-user enablement or disablement control for selecting the GitHub Copilot harness.

Raw JSON (for debugging)

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