How Microsoft is betting on AI agents in Windows, dusting off a winning playbook from the past

[Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series and 2026 event, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the people, companies, and ideas behind the rise of AI agents.]

It was “like bringing a Porsche right into a globe of Design Ts.”

That’s what Microsoft stated in its 1990 yearly record regarding the change from MS-DOS to Windows. However the larger innovation for the business had not been the visual user interface. It was Windows’ capability to function as a system for applications made by others.

Windows 3.0, launched that year, made third-party software application much easier to locate and release, and supplied programmers a clear deal: develop to Microsoft’s specifications, and your software application would certainly come to be a top-notch person on the computer systems that were showing up “on every workdesk and in every home,” as the business’s initial goal declaration placed it.

Thirty-five years later on, AI really feels much less like an automobile and even more like a spaceship. However Microsoft is really hoping that Windows can once more function as the system where all of it removes.

A brand-new structure called Representative Launchers, introduced earlier this month as a sneak peek in the current Windows Expert develop, allows programmers sign up representatives straight with the os. They can define a representative with what’s referred to as a show, which after that allows the representative turn up in the Windows taskbar, inside Microsoft Copilot, and throughout various other applications.

The lasting pledge for Windows customers is self-governing aides that operate their part, straight on their equipments. Past regular jobs like constructing a PDF or arranging documents, representatives can keep an eye on e-mail and schedules to fix organizing disputes, or check papers throughout numerous applications to gather an instruction for a future conference.

Attaining that degree of freedom needs greater than simply a smart user interface. It will certainly take deep, relentless memory that runs much more like the human mind.

” We are currently getting in a stage where we develop abundant scaffolds that coordinate numerous designs and representatives; represent memory and privileges; allow abundant and secure devices utilize,” Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella created in a blog post today expecting 2026. “This is the design refinement we should remain to develop to obtain worth out of AI in the real life.”

Components of this are currently arising in other places.

• Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude deal desktop-style agents with web browsers and indigenous applications, with extensions that can review web pages, fill kinds, and take restricted activities on a customer’s part.
• Amazon is establishing “frontier agents” focused on automating company procedures in the cloud.
• Start-ups like Seattle-based Vercept are constructing standalone agentic applications that work with job throughout devices.

However Microsoft’s Windows group is wagering that representatives firmly connected to the os will certainly triumph over ones that simply work on top of it, equally as a brand-new course of Windows applications changed a jumble of DOS programs in the very early days of the visual os.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is utilizing the Representative Launchers structure for first-party representatives like Expert, which aids customers go into information, and Scientist, which develops thorough records. Software application programmers will certainly have the ability to register their very own representatives when an application is set up, or on the fly based upon points like whether a customer is checked in or spending for a membership.

The threats presented by computer representatives

The alongside the past just presume. Standard computer applications ran in their very own home windows, collaborated with their very own documents, and really did not touch the remainder of the system essentially.

” Representatives are mosting likely to require to be able to scratchpad their job,” Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott stated lately on the South Park Commons Minus 1 podcast, describing that representatives will certainly require to keep a background of individual communications and take advantage of the essential context to address troubles.

Representatives are suggested to preserve this context throughout applications, ask follow-up inquiries, and do something about it on a customer’s part. That needs a various degree of trust fund than Windows has actually ever before needed to take care of, which is currently increasing tough inquiries for the business.

Microsoft recognizes that representatives present special protection threats. In a support document, the business cautioned that harmful material installed in documents or user interface components can bypass a representative’s guidelines– possibly causing swiped information or malware setup.

To resolve this, Microsoft states it has actually constructed a protection structure that runs representatives in their very own included office, with a devoted individual account that has actually restricted accessibility to individual folders. The concept is to produce a border in between the representative and what the remainder of the system can gain access to.

The agentic attributes are off by default, and Microsoft is suggesting customers to “recognize the protection ramifications of making it possible for a representative on your computer system” prior to transforming them on.

A various affordable landscape

Also if Microsoft performs completely, the landscape is various currently. In the very early 1990s, Windows ended up being leading since programmers crowded to the system, which brought in much more customers, which brought in much more programmers. It was a virtuous cycle, and Microsoft went to the heart of it.

However Windowsisn’t the center of the computing world anymore Mobile phones, web browsers, and cloud systems have actually broken up the landscape in manner ins which really did not exist at that time. Microsoft missed out on the mobile age practically totally, and the computer is currently one display amongst lots of.

In the business, Microsoft has much better ground. Azure, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and an expanding environment of business-focused representatives provide the business a solid placement, completing versus Google, Amazon, OpenAI and others for cloud-based AI representatives and solutions.

Representative Launchers is a various wager– an effort to make Windows the home for representatives that offer private customers by themselves equipments. That’s a harder offer when the computer is taking on phones, web browsers, and cloud applications for individuals’s interest. Microsoft can develop the system, however it can not assure that programmers will certainly turn up the method they did 35 years earlier.

And unlike in the 1990s, Microsoft can not trust customers to accept what it’s structure. There’s an expanding belief that these AI capacities are being pressed right into Windows not since customers desire them, however since Microsoft requires to validate its huge AI financial investments.

In October, for instance, Microsoft introduced new features consisting of “Hey Copilot” voice activation, a revamped taskbar with Copilot integrated in, and the growth of “Copilot Actions” agentic capacities past the web browser to the computer itself.

” They’re considering profits most importantly,” long time technology reporter and Microsoft onlooker Ed Bott statedon the GeekWire Podcast at the time The even more customers count on these AI attributes, he clarified, the much easier it ends up being for the business to upsell them on costs solutions.

There is an organization fact driving every one of this. In Microsoft’s newest , Windows and Tools created $17.3 billion in profits– basically level for the previous 3 years.

That’s much less than Video gaming ($ 23.5 billion) and LinkedIn ($ 17.8 billion), and a portion of the $98 billion in profits from Azure and cloud solutions or the virtually $88 billion from Microsoft 365 industrial.

Comparative, in monetary 1995, 5 years after the launch of Windows 3.0, Microsoft’s systems team (that included MS-DOS and Windows) stood for regarding 40% of its complete profits of $5.9 billion. Windows was the development engine for the business.

Windows is not likely to play that sort of outsized duty once more. However AI combination is the business’s best option to return the OS to development. Whether that eventually appears like a recovered Porsche or a spaceship on the launch pad possibly does not matter as high as maintaining it out of the junkyard.