{"id":26029,"date":"2026-08-06T09:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/?p=26029"},"modified":"2026-08-06T09:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:17:13","slug":"announcing-the-preview-of-the-work-iq-developer-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/announcing-the-preview-of-the-work-iq-developer-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcing the preview of the Work IQ Developer Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Software is shifting from apps built for people to agents that can reason over context and act on someone&#8217;s behalf. Microsoft 365 Copilot put that shift in front of hundreds of millions of users, and Work IQ gave agents a production-ready intelligence layer to build on. What&#8217;s been missing is the path in between: getting from an idea to a production agent running in front of customers.<\/p>\n<p>Today we&#8217;re announcing the <strong>developer preview of Work IQ Developer Tools (WIQD)<\/strong>, the agentic experience for Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility that takes any plugin (skills, connectors, declarative agents) from an empty folder to a published, monitored product. One install. One mental model. The whole lifecycle in a single flow that you, or the Copilot building alongside you, can run end to end.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"prettyprint language-default\"><code class=\"language-default\"># Install WIQD on Windows\r\niex \"&amp; { $(irm 'https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/install.ps1') }\"\r\n\r\n# Install WIQD on Mac \/ Linux\r\ncurl -fsSL https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/install.sh | bash<\/code><\/pre>\n<pre class=\"prettyprint language-default\"><code class=\"language-default\"># Using your preferred agentic experience like Github Copilot CLI\u00a0\r\n\r\n&gt; Create an internal support plugin, add a declarative agent responsible for handling the most common asks from our knowledge base, a SKILL.md skill to help triage the support tickets, and a remote MCP connector to our internal support platform, validate it, and publish it to our internal catalog.<\/code><\/pre>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv.webp\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-26035 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv.webp\" alt=\"Work IQ Dev Tools\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv.webp 1920w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2026\/08\/POWERPNT_aCUVnc1tXv-1536x864.webp 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<h2>Why we built it<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve built any Microsoft 365 Copilot plugin including a skill, a connector or a declarative agent in the last six months, you know the drill. You scaffold, register, validate, share, target, submit, and track certification across systems.<\/p>\n<p>The Work IQ Developer Tools turns that scattered lifecycle into one product-shaped developer experience. Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility no longer must be a strong inner loop followed by a cliff at every stage.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to ship Copilot plugins at the speed Copilot makes it possible, the whole journey must become one surface an agent can run start to finish. And this surface is the Work IQ Developer Tools.<\/p>\n<h2>Built for Copilot to drive<\/h2>\n<p>The CLI is probably the least interesting part. What matters is that the path from idea to production is one flow you can hand to an agent, and the Work IQ Developer Tools ship everything an agent needs to run that loop on day one.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>An agent plugin<\/strong> exposes the full lifecycle inside Copilot and IDE chat. Describe what you want (&#8220;scaffold a support-triage agent, add a Graph connector, validate it, and generate evals&#8221;) and the right skills handle it. This is Copilot shipping Copilot plugins.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A language server (LSP)<\/strong> gives you live diagnostics on plugin-related files, including declarative agent manifests, plugin manifests, and adaptive cards, as you (or your coding agent) type. The same signal that keeps you on rails keeps the agent on rails.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Machine-readable output everywhere.<\/strong> Every interactive prompt has a flag equivalent, every command speaks <span style=\"font-family: terminal, monaco, monospace;\">&#8211;json<\/span>, and exit codes stay stable, so the same commands you run by hand drop straight into a pipeline.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Under the hood, the build phase creates the manifest, discovers its dependencies (MCP tools through a live handshake, API plugins, agent connectors, skills), wires their schemas into the manifest, and configures the LSP. The agent understands tool semantics and makes integration decisions a narrow command surface alone can&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<h2>One flow, end to end<\/h2>\n<p>The Work IQ Developer Tools give humans and coding agents the same grammar for the entire lifecycle:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"prettyprint language-default\"><code class=\"language-default\">create \u2192 configure \u2192 validate \u2192 provision \u2192 package \u2192 share \u2192 ask \u2192 eval \u2192 publish \u2192 monitor<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Create once, then spin the wheel. The same verbs work whether you describe what you want in chat, type the command in your terminal for precision, or wire it into a CI\/CD pipeline. Same engine, same behavior, same contract, because the CLI, the agent plugin, and the VS Code extension all run on one core.<\/p>\n<table width=\"624\">\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Phase<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>What happens<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Build<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">Scaffold the plugin, edit instructions, wire capabilities and tools, localize<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Quality<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">Validate the manifest, generate and run evals, debug using Work IQ<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Preview<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">Package, provision, and share with real users<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"312\"><strong>Ship<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"312\">Publish to Microsoft 365 Admin Center or to the Microsoft 365 Store through Partner Center*, target your audience, and monitor adoption<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><em>* Coming soon<\/em><\/p>\n<h2><b><span data-contrast=\"none\">Plugins are the reusable unit; agents are a composition<\/span><\/b><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559738&quot;:280,&quot;335559739&quot;:120}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Work IQ Dev Tools treat the plugin as the durable product unit. A plugin can contain a declarative agent, reusable SKILL.md skills, remote MCP connectors, and the metadata that binds those capabilities into a Microsoft 365 app package. A declarative agent is a first-class component of that plugin; not the container that every reusable capability must live inside.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559739&quot;:160}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">That model lets a team author a focused capability once, publish it to the shared registry, and compose it into multiple agent experiences. Agent authors spend less time rebuilding integrations, while plugin owners retain one source of truth for validation, versioning, and fixes.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;335559739&quot;:160}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Quality is part of the loop, not a bolt-on<\/h2>\n<p>As plugins move from demos into real workflows, the bar for shipping rises with them. Customers expect plugins that are accurate, grounded, and consistent across the breadth of prompts they actually get. Meeting that bar takes evaluation that&#8217;s objective, repeatable, and built into the way you work.<\/p>\n<p>Work IQ Developer Tools read your manifest and generates targeted evals as standard YAML. Run them locally in your inner loop or in CI\/CD, measure regressions across runs instead of eyeballing them, and iterate. Need to debug? It resolves the right information from provisioning and invokes your agent straight from the terminal using Work IQ, so you&#8217;re not copy-pasting IDs between tools.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"prettyprint language-default\"><code class=\"language-default\"># Using your preferred agentic experience\r\n&gt; Evaluate my plugin based on its configuration \r\n\r\n# Or using the CLI\r\nwiqd agent eval init\r\nwiqd agent eval<\/code><\/pre>\n<h2>Ship to real customers, then grow<\/h2>\n<p>Publishing is where the old toolchain stopped and the portal marathon began. Now, the last mile is built into the same flow:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Publish where customers are.<\/strong> Submit to the Microsoft Marketplace through Partner Center or to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center for LOB scenarios without leaving your project.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Target before you submit.<\/strong> Pick your audience up front instead of discovering targeting rules in a portal after you&#8217;ve shipped.<\/li>\n<li><strong>One source of truth.<\/strong> Your package drives submission metadata, so you don&#8217;t re-enter the same data across systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Shipping is the start, not the finish. <span style=\"font-family: terminal, monaco, monospace;\">wiqd agent monitor<\/span> pulls usage, health, and adoption telemetry from Work IQ into your terminal. See what&#8217;s working, pipe real usage back into your evals, re-publish, and watch the curve move, all without leaving the environment you built in.<\/p>\n<h2>How it fits with Work IQ<\/h2>\n<p>The name is the relationship: WIQD is <strong>Work IQ Developer Tools<\/strong>, and the connection runs both ways.<\/p>\n<p>It builds on the same Work IQ Platform that powers production agent intelligence, the layer that lets agents reason over organizational context with permission-aware governance, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/blog\/2026\/06\/02\/announcing-the-new-work-iq-apis\/\">new Work IQ APIs<\/a> that give agents intelligence, speed, efficiency, scale, and security built in.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s how that platform gets richer. Every plugin you ship through it becomes another specialized, well-scoped source of context. A model guessing about your billing system is weaker than a billing agent that actually knows it. Get the lifecycle out of the way, and developers ship more specialized agents and more agents make Work IQ richer, giving broader, more grounded context to every other agent that builds on it. That loop is what we&#8217;re really after.<\/p>\n<h2>Get started<\/h2>\n<p>The developer preview is open now. You&#8217;ll need Node.js and a Microsoft 365 tenant with a Copilot license to provision into.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get started: <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/start\">https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/start<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Docs: <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/docs\">https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/docs<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Repo: <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/repo\">https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd\/repo<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>We want your feedback<\/h2>\n<p>This is a developer preview, and your voice shapes the road to general availability. Build a real agent with it, push on the rough edges, and tell us what&#8217;s missing. The fastest path is built right in:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"prettyprint language-default\"><code class=\"language-default\"># Using your preferred agentic experience\r\n&gt; I want to share feedback that the Work IQ Dev Tools are...\r\n\r\n# Or using the CLI \r\nwiqd feedback \r\n\r\n# All feedback is filed straight into our open backlog on https:\/\/aka.ms\/wiqd<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>We&#8217;re watching the signal live during preview. Try it against your agents, tell us which lifecycle stages, evaluators, and integrations matter most to your team, and help us decide what comes next.<\/p>\n<p>Defy limits. Build wicked things.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Work IQ Dev Tools team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Software is shifting from apps built for people to agents that can reason over context and act on someone&#8217;s behalf. Microsoft 365 Copilot put that shift in front of hundreds of millions of users, and Work IQ gave agents a production-ready intelligence layer to build on. What&#8217;s been missing is the path in between: getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69087,"featured_media":26035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-365-copilot","category-microsoft-365-developer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Software is shifting from apps built for people to agents that can reason over context and act on someone&#8217;s behalf. Microsoft 365 Copilot put that shift in front of hundreds of millions of users, and Work IQ gave agents a production-ready intelligence layer to build on. What&#8217;s been missing is the path in between: getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69087"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26046,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26029\/revisions\/26046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}