GitHub Copilot cloud agent available in Microsoft Teams public preview

GitHub has opened a public preview of its Copilot cloud agent inside Microsoft Teams. The integration lets users start and steer agent sessions by mentioning @GitHub in a channel, thread, or direct message. It is available to anyone on a paid Copilot plan, but administrators must first enable both the cloud agent and cloud sandboxes for it to work in an organization.

Mentioning @GitHub followed by a task starts a Copilot cloud agent session. Anyone in the conversation can ask questions, add context, or redirect the agent's work. Making changes to a repository requires write access, so participants can only trigger Copilot edits if they hold that permission. The session runs asynchronously in a cloud sandbox, and the agent's output can later be picked up from a terminal, the Copilot app, or an IDE.

GitHub positions the Teams integration partly as a way to turn meeting decisions into tracked work. The example given is asking Copilot to investigate a problem during a team standup and letting the agent run while the discussion continues. The agent's investigation is visible to everyone in the channel, which means the group can redirect it in real time rather than waiting for a follow-up outside the meeting.

Cost considerations apply. Cloud agent sessions consume AI credits, and organizations can govern that usage through usage-based billing budgets. Cloud sandbox usage is billed separately and can be capped with a product-level or SKU-level budget. Pricing figures for either component have not been published.

Compliance features are more concrete. Repository administrators can require an additional approval for any pull request attributed to the Microsoft Teams Copilot integration identity before it merges. In a repository that already requires two approvals, that becomes three for agent-authored PRs. The mechanism adds a human checkpoint on top of the existing approval flow rather than introducing any new review logic.

Setup is not fully turnkey. Admins must enable the cloud agent and cloud sandbox policies, which share the same configuration, and users need to install the GitHub app for Teams and connect their GitHub account. Public channels can be assigned a default repository; direct messages cannot, so tasks in DMs need explicit repository context.

The preview is functional but carries preconditions — paid plans, admin configuration, credit consumption, and separate sandbox billing. The additional-approval requirement for Copilot-attributed PRs signals how GitHub expects organizations to treat agent-authored code: as work that ships, but not without a human sign-off.