Microsoft announced a redesigned Copilot app on September 25, 2026, organized around Home, Code and Autopilot, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint planned as part of the experience. The design brings conversational help, delegated work and app-building into one workplace app; Microsoft plans to roll it out in stages and charge for some advanced capabilities based on usage.
Satya Nadella framed Copilot as a “new OS for work,” describing a broader role for the app. His phrase was product positioning: Microsoft announced a Copilot app redesign, not a new operating system.
What Home, Code and Autopilot are designed to do
Home brings Chat and Cowork together. Chat is for quick questions, lookups and drafts; Cowork is designed to take on delegated, multistep work and return a result. The planned Office in Copilot integration brings Word, Excel and PowerPoint into the app. Microsoft says people will be able to create or update editable files and keep them synchronized with the Office apps and team collaborators.
Code is designed to turn natural-language descriptions into apps, trackers, dashboards, automations and workflows. Microsoft says it uses technology underlying GitHub Copilot and runs in a sandbox. The company positions Code for creating purpose-built tools, while developers continue to use GitHub Copilot for day-to-day software development.
| Capability | Function described by Microsoft | Announced billing |
| Chat | Quick questions, lookups and drafts | User subscription license for everyday Copilot use |
| Cowork | Delegated, multistep work that runs toward a completed result | Usage-based billing, plus the required user subscription license |
| Code | Apps and workflows built from natural-language descriptions | Usage-based billing, plus the required user subscription license |
| Autopilot | A persistent agent assigned a name, role and goal for continuing or recurring work | Usage-based billing, plus the required user subscription license |
Autopilot is designed for ongoing work, with human approval for one-way actions
Microsoft describes Autopilot, previously called Scout, as an agent that can monitor channels, follow up on threads, run recurring work and resume projects. It is designed to operate inside an organization’s Microsoft 365 tenant, with its own identity, memory, computer and workspace. Microsoft says organizational permissions, auditing and controls govern the agent, which can appear in services such as Teams and Outlook.
In an interview, Microsoft executive Jacob Andreou said one-way actions require human intervention and that sending email requires explicit permission.
Copilot’s two-part billing model
Microsoft’s announced model pairs a per-user monthly subscription license (USL) for everyday Copilot use with usage-based billing (UBB) for advanced work. UBB uses Copilot Credits and requires a USL. Microsoft places Cowork, Code, Autopilot, certain long-running agent work and frontier models such as Fable and Astra in the usage-based category.
For enterprise customers, usage-based services stay off until an administrator creates a spending policy. Administrators can set budgets, caps and alerts, as well as control access to model families.
Microsoft plans a staged rollout
Microsoft said Home and Code would begin rolling out through its Frontier program in the weeks after the September 25 announcement. It planned to expand Autopilot to private preview at September’s end, and said Code would reach Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers in preview later in 2026.
Microsoft also described Today, a planned personalized view of mail, calendar, Teams threads, meetings and tasks, with a private preview planned for October.
