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 claimed in its 1990 yearly record concerning the change from MS-DOS to Windows. However the larger advancement for the firm had not been the visual user interface. It was Windows’ capacity to function as a system for applications made by others.

Windows 3.0, launched that year, made third-party software program less complicated to locate and introduce, and used designers a clear deal: develop to Microsoft’s specifications, and your software program would certainly end up being a first-rate resident on the computer systems that were getting here “on every workdesk and in every home,” as the firm’s initial goal declaration placed it.

Thirty-five years later on, AI really feels much less like an auto and even more like a space rocket. However Microsoft is really hoping that Windows can once more function as the system where everything removes.

A brand-new structure called Representative Launchers, introduced earlier this month as a sneak peek in the current Windows Expert develop, allows designers sign up representatives straight with the os. They can explain a representative via 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 assurance for Windows customers is independent aides that operate their part, straight on their devices. Past regular jobs like setting up a PDF or arranging data, representatives might check e-mail and schedules to settle organizing disputes, or check records throughout several applications to gather a rundown for a future conference.

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

” We are currently going into a stage where we develop abundant scaffolds that manage several designs and representatives; make up memory and privileges; allow abundant and risk-free devices make use of,” Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella created in a blog post today expecting 2026. “This is the design refinement we need to remain to develop to obtain worth out of AI in the real life.”

Components of this are currently arising somewhere else.

• Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude deal desktop-style agents via web browsers and indigenous applications, with extensions that can review web pages, fill types, and take restricted activities on an individual’s part.
• Amazon is establishing “frontier agents” targeted at 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 just operate 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 assists customers go into information, and Scientist, which constructs thorough records. Software program designers will certainly have the ability to register their very own representatives when an application is mounted, or on the fly based upon points like whether an individual is checked in or spending for a membership.

The threats positioned by computer representatives

The alongside the past just presume. Conventional computer applications ran in their very own home windows, dealt with their very own data, and really did not touch the remainder of the system generally.

” Representatives are mosting likely to require to be able to scratchpad their job,” Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott claimed lately on the South Park Commons Minus 1 podcast, clarifying that representatives will certainly require to maintain a background of individual communications and use the required context to address issues.

Representatives are indicated to preserve this context throughout applications, ask follow-up concerns, and do something about it on an individual’s part. That needs a various degree of depend on than Windows has actually ever before needed to handle, which is currently increasing challenging concerns for the firm.

Microsoft recognizes that representatives present special protection threats. In a support document, the firm cautioned that destructive web content installed in data or user interface components might bypass a representative’s directions– possibly causing taken information or malware installment.

To resolve this, Microsoft claims it has actually developed a safety and security structure that runs representatives in their very own included office, with a specialized individual account that has actually restricted accessibility to individual folders. The concept is to produce a limit in between the representative and what the remainder of the system can gain access to.

The agentic functions 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 carries out flawlessly, the landscape is various currently. In the very early 1990s, Windows ended up being leading since designers gathered to the system, which brought in a lot more customers, which brought in a lot more designers. 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 fragmentised the landscape in manner ins which really did not exist at that time. Microsoft missed out on the mobile period virtually completely, and the computer is currently one display amongst lots of.

In the venture, Microsoft has much better ground. Azure, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and an expanding community of business-focused representatives offer the firm a solid setting, contending 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 specific customers by themselves devices. That’s a harder offer when the computer is taking on phones, web browsers, and cloud applications for individuals’s focus. Microsoft can develop the system, yet it can not assure that designers will certainly turn up the means they did 35 years back.

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

In October, for instance, Microsoft revealed 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 internet browser to the computer itself.

” They’re considering profits primarily,” long time technology reporter and Microsoft viewer Ed Bott claimedon the GeekWire Podcast at the time The even more customers count on these AI functions, he described, the less complicated it ends up being for the firm to upsell them on costs solutions.

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

That’s much less than Pc 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 business.

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

Windows is not likely to play that sort of outsized duty once again. However AI assimilation is the firm’s best choice to return the OS to development. Whether that inevitably resembles a brought back Porsche or a space rocket on the launch pad possibly does not matter as long as maintaining it out of the junkyard.