Building Custom Agents with the Microsoft Copilot Harness in Microsoft Foundry

This video walks through the Microsoft Copilot harness, showing how to build custom agents that can incorporate additional skills, tools, and sub-agents. It covers the setup process, configuration options, and the built-in capabilities that let you scale without managing the underlying infrastructure.

■ Agent Setup and Configuration
- Creating a new agent and enabling the harness option
- Defining a name, skills, and MCP servers for the agent
- Specifying the harness type and operating instructions

■ Built-in Harness Tools and Capabilities
- Using sub-agents and helper agents for tasks such as queries
- Fetching pages from the web
- Creating, editing, and deleting files in a local workspace via an Azure YAML file

■ Scaling and Deployment
- Tool calling within the agent definition
- Scaling without worrying about the infrastructure in between
- Using the harness within Microsoft Foundry

This content is aimed at developers and engineers who want to build custom agents using Microsoft's tooling. After watching, you will understand how to configure an agent with skills and tools, what built-in capabilities the harness provides, and where to start building in Microsoft Foundry.