Building agents in Copilot
Five lessons · declare, test, share
You have Copilot. An agent is for work that should run the same way every time, after you test it.
Lessons
- 01 What an Agent Actually Is
Declarative agents, four declarations that define behavior, knowledge, and starters.
- 02 The Three Paths Into Agent Builder
Natural language, Configure tab, and templates, plus the loop that works in practice.
- 03 The Five Fields That Make or Break an Agent
Name, description, instructions, knowledge, starter prompts, priority order when time is short.
- 04 Testing, Refining, and Knowing When It's Good Enough
Easy, edge, and hard queries, diagnose knowledge vs instructions vs description.
- 05 Sharing Your Agent and Building for Others
Link sharing vs org catalog, team design, three starter templates, governance.
Five lessons. Each reads in approximately 20–30 minutes; practice tasks (especially Lesson 4 testing) take longer and are the point. No development background required, you need a Copilot license, a repeatable task that costs you time, and patience for the learning curve.
Begin Lesson 1Agent Builder is configuration, not magic. What matters is what you declare the agent knows, how it behaves, and where it stops.
Complete lessons in order. Each ends with one concrete thing to build or test before you move on.
Recommended: complete Getting Started and Copilot Basics first so prompting and verification habits are in place.