Microsoft Unveils Redesigned Copilot With Home, Code and Autopilot

The release is anchored by three new capabilities: Home, Code and Autopilot, each aimed at a different kind of work.

Home brings together two existing modes, Chat for quick questions and Cowork for tasks users delegate entirely, under one shared starting point. Word, Excel and PowerPoint now operate inside the same interface, allowing users to draft documents, budgets and presentations without switching applications. In those documents, Copilot is grounded in Fabric IQ, pulling context from more than 20 million semantic models built in Power BI. Edits made by colleagues or by the assistant itself appear in real time, so progress stays synchronized across a shared file.

A new plugin registry will let organizations manage Microsoft, partner and custom-built plugins from one central catalog starting this month. Independent developers and partners can also publish plugins once for use across multiple Copilot surfaces under the new registry arrangement.

The Code tool allows non-programmers to describe an app, tracker or dashboard in plain language and have it built automatically. The feature runs on the same underlying technology used in GitHub Copilot and can be hosted within a company's own systems.

Autopilot is a persistent agent capable of completing recurring work without needing a new instruction each time. It can run supplier reviews or similar multi-step processes, build schedules, contact stakeholders and follow up on outstanding items independently. Because it operates continuously in the cloud, work can continue late at night or whenever a person's attention shifts elsewhere.

A related feature called Today, entering private preview in October, will summarize missed messages and pending tasks across mail and chat.

Microsoft is tying spending controls to these tools through a system it calls FinOps for AI, letting administrators track usage. Administrators can set spending limits, approve credit requests and restrict which AI models different teams are permitted to use each month.

Everyday tasks such as quick answers or first drafts run on a fixed-price subscription, while agentic features use usage-based billing. Code, Cowork and Autopilot all fall under this usage-based pricing model, alongside frontier models Microsoft refers to as Astra and Fable.

Home and Code are set to roll out through Microsoft's Frontier program within weeks, and Autopilot enters private preview by the end of the month.

Microsoft has not released independent data showing how widely the three features are being adopted, how accurate they are or how much time they actually save.