Microsoft makes Copilot Harness available through Foundry
The GitHub-born Copilot Harness is now available to Microsoft Foundry customers, bringing more than 20 model families and bring-your-own keys into one managed agent runtime.
AT A GLANCE
Key points
- Copilot Harness is offered as a managed service through Microsoft Foundry.
- It supports more than 20 models and bring-your-own API keys.
- It works with MCP, agent skills and plugin standards.
- Microsoft operates the agent loop and sandbox.
What is changing?
Microsoft made Copilot Harness available through Microsoft Foundry on October 28. Built by GitHub engineers, the layer manages long-running agent tasks by providing models with instructions, context, tool access, an execution environment and controls. The same infrastructure powers Copilot Code, Copilot Studio, the GitHub Copilot app, CLI and VS Code.
Microsoft says the Harness supports more than 20 frontier models and lets customers bring their own API keys. It can route work and orchestrate multiple models according to task requirements. The layer supports open standards including MCP, agent skills and plugins, while its runtime was recently ported to Rust.
In Foundry, Microsoft operates the agent loop and sandbox, while developers choose instructions, skills, tools and models. The SDK can be downloaded or the service can run as a managed cloud offering. Microsoft’s performance and cost claims should still be measured on production workloads.
Explore the original sources
Source date: 28 October 2026.
Published by AI Radar: 28 Oct 2026, 22:08 (Istanbul, UTC+3).
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