Michael S. Collier

Today Microsoft unveiled the Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service. With the new harness (built on what was previously known as the GitHub Copilot SDK), Microsoft Foundry prompt agents can read and write files in the agent workspace, perform web searches, run shell commands in a sandboxed session, spawn subagents, and add standard agent skills (via a SKILL.md or the Foundry Skills Catalog).

I’m excited to share that I’ve been accepted to the Microsoft MVP program! My award category is Azure Application PaaS. I was in the inaugural Azure MVP group nearly 16 years ago (awarded in October 2010). I “retired” from the MVP program in January 2015 when I joined Microsoft as an employee (employees aren’t eligible). While I no longer work at Microsoft, I remain an avid user and proponent of many Microsoft developer technologies. I’m thrilled to once again join the MVP program and this amazing community.

I’ve been intrigued by the GitHub Copilot App ever since it first shipped at Build a few months ago. It offers a different way of working for me, and I’m getting more comfortable with it every day. One thing that held me back was its lack of support for repositories in WSL. That has now changed.

I had the pleasure of attending Beer City Code for the first time last weekend, August 14-15, 2026. Held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the conference brings together software developers and technology professionals to learn from one another. I was honored to co-lead a workshop and deliver a session, and I’m already looking forward to coming back next year!

Microsoft Build is always packed with big announcements, but my favorite part is bringing those ideas back home and figuring out what actually helps teams ship better software. On June 20th, we did exactly that at Microsoft Build \\localhost:columbus.