Microsoft Brings App Building Capabilities to Copilot Cowork and Studio

Microsoft Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio now support the agentic creation of apps using natural language.

“AI is changing who can build software,” Microsoft corporate vice president Ryan Cunningham writes. “People who could never write code can now describe an idea and generate a working application in minutes, using any number of agentic coding solutions. But generating an application is only part of the equation. To solve real business problems, applications need to connect to enterprise data and systems, operate securely, and fit within the processes people rely on every day. And as more people become app builders, IT needs the governance and controls to confidently bring those solutions into the enterprise.”

In Copilot Work, this new capability is available via the new App skill. Just describe the app you want, the problem you wish to solve, or the information you want visualized, reference data from Microsoft 365 sources like documents, spreadsheets, meetings, and messages, and Cowork will create the app. However, because this skill is still in preview, you need to be part of Microsoft’s Frontier preview program for now.

With Copilot Studio, you can now build apps alongside agents and workflows by choosing App (Preview) from the Copilot Studio home screen. As above, just describe the business outcome, users, data, and actions you need, and Copilot Studio will use agentic coding to turn your ideas into complete business process solutions. Microsoft says the public preview will roll out in the next week.

What sets this app-making capability apart from similar solutions elsewhere is that you can integrate these apps with Microsoft Entra organizational data and connector policies, while IT admins can see and manage app deployments throughout an organization in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Here goes nothing. It’s unclear whether those overseeing Microsoft environments will even allow such a thing, so this will be an interesting experiment at least.