The Best AI Agent Builder Is Trapped Inside Microsoft

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I’ve taught AI workshops to thousands of people, and the most common reason people give me for using Microsoft Copilot over Claude or ChatGPT is “because I have to.”

Much like Teams over Slack, or SharePoint over Drive, corporate IT departments choose Copilot because it’s the safe option that integrates with all the other ones Microsoft has supplied you over the years.

Meanwhile all the fun is being had elsewhere. In the nine months from May 2025 to February 2026, Claude Code became the most popular AI coding tool, with 63 percent of respondents reaching for it in Pragmatic Engineer’s survey. Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot lost the lead in a category it invented when it launched in 2021, a year and a half before the release of ChatGPT-3.

More recently, Codex usage shot up from 6 million to 10 million users in a week, as its new GPT-5.6 Sol model and lingering uncertainty over Anthropic’s Fable access convinced people to switch. As Dan Shipper noticed early, the Codex app had been building momentum for six months before the latest model tipped the scales.

Something similar is happening with Copilot Studio. I’m not talking about GitHub Copilot or the Copilot app (more on that later). I’m talking about Microsoft’s no-code platform for creating AI agents. It’s similar to OpenAI’s custom GPTs, crossed with Microsoft Power Platform—a trio of pre-AI low-code/no-code business tools featuring Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. You build custom workflows that wire your data connectors into AI agents.

Since I work with a lot of financial services firms and large companies, I have the distinction of being the first person at Every to buy a Copilot license. An IT leader working for one of my clients showed me the AI agents he built with the tool and told me, “People don’t realize that Microsoft has become the best place for us to do this.”

That got me excited enough to cover Microsoft Build and line up an interview with Ryan Cunningham, corporate vice president of Copilot Studio, about how the company arrived here.

I’m convinced Microsoft has a shot at making the best tools to build AI agents people actually use. We may be only one confusing administrative provisioning panel away from breakout success—if only the company would fix its new user experience.

Will the real Copilot please stand up?

If you took me at my word and opened the Copilot app—after suffering through purchasing, onboarding, and provisioning—you could reasonably conclude I’d lost my mind.

To be clear, I mean Microsoft Copilot Studio, though it’s probably not the one you know. First, the regular consumer Copilot app, what most people use day to day. It has a basic agent builder of its own but none of the features that convinced me of Microsoft’s coming dominance. Second, Copilot Studio—the more advanced agent builder, and the one I’m talking about. Third, GitHub Copilot, the original coding agent, which is completely separate: its own account, payment model, authentication system, and feature entitlements—not even the same subscription.

I’m also not talking about the more than 80 other products Microsoft launched with the name “Copilot.” “There are now Copilots inside Copilots, Copilots for other Copilots, and a physical Copilot key on your keyboard for summoning them,” said strategy consultant Tey Bannerman, who compiled the aforementioned list.

To give our senior applied AI engineer Nityesh Agarwal Copilot Studio access, here’s the sequence:

1. Searched for “copilot” on Bing.
2. Learned I needed a Microsoft account first so created one.
3. Downloaded Microsoft Authenticator for two-factor authentication.
4. Went back to Copilot, only to learn you can’t buy it there.
5. Went to admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home, opened Billing > Your Products, clicked “Add more products,” and found Copilot.
6. Learned you can’t buy Microsoft 365 Copilot ($216 a year) without another subscription first.
7. Found and bought Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot ($282 a year).
8. Opened Users > Add a user and emailed him the temporary password.
9. Opened Billing > Licenses > Assign licenses and assigned the new product to the new user you created.
10. Told him to visit copilot.microsoft.com.
11. He logged in, reset the temporary password, and did the authenticator dance.
12. The site asked, “Which Copilot experience are you looking for?” and sent him to copilot.cloud.microsoft.com.
13. That page redirected him to m365.cloud.microsoft/chat/.
14. He opened Agents > New Agent.
15. He saw none of the features I was raving about.
16. I told him no, that’s the agent builder; he needed copilotstudio.microsoft.com.
17. He said, “wow it’s like being transported to january 2025 lol.”
18. His second question: “does it not have skills?”

Microsoft says agents can have skills, but I still haven’t been able to figure out how to get them. They’re right there in Copilot Studio, just not enabled for my license. I still don’t know whether I bought the right license, or why giving my agent a simple skill.md text file is a premium feature. The whole thing took hours; if I hadn’t been motivated to try, I would have given up.

None of this stops anyone with an IT department. IT staff who already work in Microsoft’s world, at companies that need all that extra control, don’t seem to mind the signup at all. They’re already used to setting up accounts and access, they like the added security, and it’s their job to know what every setting does.

The problem is that hiding behind all these confusing brand names, admin panels, and signup hurdles is a genuinely great product.

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