Summary
- Microsoft Copilot Studio is gaining general availability for the GitHub Copilot harness, adding a new authoring option for autonomous agents and workflows.
- Copilot Studio is becoming a multi-harness platform, with GitHub Copilot harness, Standard harness, and Copilot Chat harness available for different agent scenarios.
- Existing Copilot Studio agents and deployments remain unchanged; no migration or modification is required for current agents.
- The new GitHub Copilot harness uses usage-based billing with Copilot Credits, and billing/cost management is handled in Power Platform admin center.
- Admins should review governance, licensing, and expected credit consumption before using the new harness in production.
Primary Service: M365 Copilot
Admin Impact: Medium
User Impact: Medium
Release Start: 03 Aug 2026
Release End: 03 Aug 2026
Services: M365 Copilot, Power Platform
Category: Stay informed
Tags: Feature Update, New Feature, User Adoption
History
8/3/2026 Item Added to Message Center
Microsoft Message
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
- Copilot Studio overview
- Choose a harness in Copilot Studio
- Overview of billing for agents powered by the GitHub Copilot harness
- Copilot Credits Guide | Microsoft
- Copilot Studio Blog | Microsoft
- Manage Copilot Studio credits and capacity
Compliance considerations
Issue: Generative AI capability
Explanation: 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.
Issue: New billing and consumption model
Explanation: GitHub Copilot harness workloads use usage-based billing through Copilot Credits. Organizations should review budget and cost-management processes.
Issue: Admin controls
Explanation: Cost management controls are available through Power Platform admin center.
Issue: User access
Explanation: 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.