What is Foundry Agent Service?

The part of Microsoft Foundry that hosts and runs AI agents. Developers can define prompt agents, use the managed Copilot harness, or bring their own framework as hosted agents.

What is the Microsoft Copilot harness?

The agent runtime built by GitHub engineers that powers GitHub Copilot and other Microsoft Copilot products. Microsoft offers it as a managed option in Foundry Agent Service, in public preview since 28 October 2026.

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Microsoft Foundry is Microsoft's Azure platform for building, deploying and governing AI apps and agents.

Abstract illustration of dotted lines from several nodes converging on a central hexagon on a dark blue background. — Microsoft opens its Copilot harness to developers in Foundry, with billing from 1 December

AI Agents28 Oct 2026, 16:45 UTC

Microsoft put the agent harness behind GitHub Copilot into Foundry Agent Service in public preview on 28 October 2026. Runtime billing starts 1 December.

Summary

Microsoft released the Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service in public preview on 28 October 2026. The harness is the agent loop GitHub built for Copilot, which Microsoft says now powers Copilot Code, Copilot Studio, VS Code and the GitHub Copilot app. Developers define agents with skills, MCP tools and subagents while Microsoft runs the loop and sandbox. The runtime is free until 1 December 2026, then billed at $0.0994 per vCPU-hour.

About Microsoft Foundry

Microsoft Foundry is Microsoft's Azure platform for building, deploying and governing AI apps and agents. It offers a catalog of models from Microsoft and other labs and Foundry Agent Service for prompt agents and hosted agents. Since 28 October 2026 it also offers the Microsoft Copilot harness as a managed agent runtime, in public preview.

Reviewed 28 Oct 2026 · by Microsoft

Facts at a glance

Developer: Microsoft
Agent options: Prompt agents, prompt agents with the Copilot harness, and hosted agents with your own framework source
Copilot harness status: Public preview from 28 October 2026 source
Copilot harness pricing: Free runtime until 1 December 2026; then $0.0994 per vCPU-hour and $0.0118 per GiB-hour of sandbox compute and memory source
Tool protocols: Foundry tools and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers source

Questions people ask

What is Foundry Agent Service?: The part of Microsoft Foundry that hosts and runs AI agents. Developers can define prompt agents, use the managed Copilot harness, or bring their own framework as hosted agents.
What is the Microsoft Copilot harness?: The agent runtime built by GitHub engineers that powers GitHub Copilot and other Microsoft Copilot products. Microsoft offers it as a managed option in Foundry Agent Service, in public preview since 28 October 2026.

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Microsoft opens its Copilot harness to developers in Foundry, with billing from 1 December