Microsoft starts letting workers build apps by describing them

Microsoft has started rolling out Copilot Code, a tool that builds apps from a plain description. You say what you need, such as a tracker, a dashboard, an automation or a workflow, and Copilot builds it. It is part of the revamped Copilot app Microsoft introduced last month. Access is coming through Microsoft's Frontier program.

How it works

You start by describing what you want. Copilot can then use a feature called Work IQ to pull from your emails, meetings, documents, chats and connected data. That helps it fill in details you left out. Once the first version is ready, you can ask for changes in plain language, including new charts, business rules and data sources.

People who want more control can edit the code directly, work with local files and use a terminal. Apps can run on your own machine or be published to Microsoft's managed cloud and shared across an organization.

If a project outgrows what one person can maintain, it can be linked to a GitHub repository, which is a shared home for code. From there it becomes a draft pull request, a proposed set of changes for developers to review. Microsoft says Copilot Code and GitHub Copilot use the same underlying technology, but Copilot Code is meant for people who are not developers.

What is not known yet

The material does not say what Copilot Code costs, which Microsoft plans include it, or when it will reach everyone beyond the Frontier program. It also does not say how well the apps hold up on real work.