[Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series and 2026 event, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the people, companies, and ideas behind the rise of AI agents.]
It was “like bringing a Porsche right into a world of Mannequin Ts.”
That’s what Microsoft stated in its 1990 annual report in regards to the shift from MS-DOS to Home windows. However the larger breakthrough for the corporate wasn’t the graphical interface. It was Home windows’ capacity to function a platform for purposes made by others.
Home windows 3.0, launched that 12 months, made third-party software program simpler to search out and launch, and provided builders a transparent cut price: construct to Microsoft’s specs, and your software program would grow to be a first-class citizen on the computer systems that had been arriving “on each desk and in each residence,” as the corporate’s unique mission assertion put it.
Thirty-five years later, AI feels much less like a automotive and extra like a rocket ship. However Microsoft is hoping that Home windows can as soon as once more function the platform the place all of it takes off.
A brand new framework referred to as Agent Launchers, launched earlier this month as a preview within the newest Home windows Insider construct, lets builders register brokers instantly with the working system. They will describe an agent by what’s often known as a manifest, which then lets the agent present up within the Home windows taskbar, inside Microsoft Copilot, and throughout different apps.
The long-term promise for Home windows customers is autonomous assistants that function on their behalf, instantly on their machines. Past routine duties like assembling a PDF or organizing recordsdata, brokers might monitor e-mail and calendars to resolve scheduling conflicts, or scan paperwork throughout a number of apps to tug collectively a briefing for an upcoming assembly.
Reaching that degree of autonomy requires greater than only a intelligent interface. It’ll take deep, persistent reminiscence that operates extra just like the human mind.
“We are actually coming into a part the place we construct wealthy scaffolds that orchestrate a number of fashions and brokers; account for reminiscence and entitlements; allow wealthy and secure instruments use,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a weblog submit this week waiting for 2026. “That is the engineering sophistication we should proceed to construct to get worth out of AI in the true world.”
Parts of this are already rising elsewhere.
- Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude provide desktop-style brokers by browsers and native apps, with extensions that may learn pages, fill types, and take restricted actions on a person’s behalf.
- Amazon is growing “frontier brokers” aimed toward automating enterprise processes within the cloud.
- Startups like Seattle-based Vercept are constructing standalone agentic apps that coordinate work throughout instruments.
However Microsoft’s Home windows group is betting that brokers tightly linked to the working system will win out over ones that merely run on prime of it, simply as a brand new class of Home windows apps changed a patchwork of DOS packages within the early days of the graphical working system.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is utilizing the Agent Launchers framework for first-party brokers like Analyst, which helps customers dig into knowledge, and Researcher, which builds detailed studies. Software program builders will have the ability to register their very own brokers when an app is put in, or on the fly based mostly on issues like whether or not a person is signed in or paying for a subscription.
The dangers posed by PC brokers
The parallels to the previous solely go thus far. Conventional PC purposes ran in their very own home windows, labored with their very own recordsdata, and didn’t contact the remainder of the system for essentially the most half.
“Brokers are going to wish to have the ability to scratchpad their work,” Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott stated lately on the South Park Commons Minus 1 podcast, explaining that brokers might want to retain a historical past of person interactions and faucet into the required context to resolve issues.
Brokers are supposed to preserve this context throughout apps, ask follow-up questions, and take actions on a person’s behalf. That requires a unique degree of belief than Home windows has ever needed to handle, which is already elevating troublesome questions for the corporate.
Microsoft acknowledges that brokers introduce distinctive safety dangers. In a help doc, the corporate warned that malicious content material embedded in recordsdata or interface parts might override an agent’s directions — probably resulting in stolen knowledge or malware set up.
To handle this, Microsoft says it has constructed a safety framework that runs brokers in their very own contained workspace, with a devoted person account that has restricted entry to person folders. The thought is to create a boundary between the agent and what the remainder of the system can entry.
The agentic options are off by default, and Microsoft is advising customers to “perceive the safety implications of enabling an agent in your laptop” earlier than turning them on.
A special aggressive panorama
Even when Microsoft executes completely, the panorama is completely different now. Within the early Nineties, Home windows turned dominant as a result of builders flocked to the platform, which attracted extra customers, which attracted extra builders. It was a virtuous cycle, and Microsoft was on the coronary heart of it.
However Home windows isn’t the middle of the computing world anymore. Smartphones, browsers, and cloud platforms have fragmented the panorama in ways in which didn’t exist again then. Microsoft missed the cell period nearly completely, and the PC is now one display amongst many.
Within the enterprise, Microsoft has higher footing. Azure, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and a rising ecosystem of business-focused brokers give the corporate a robust place, competing towards Google, Amazon, OpenAI and others for cloud-based AI brokers and companies.
Agent Launchers is a unique wager — an try to make Home windows the house for brokers that serve particular person customers on their very own machines. That’s a tougher promote when the PC is competing with telephones, browsers, and cloud apps for individuals’s consideration. Microsoft can construct the platform, however it may well’t assure that builders will present up the way in which they did 35 years in the past.
And in contrast to within the Nineties, Microsoft can’t rely on customers to embrace what it’s constructing. There’s a rising sentiment that these AI capabilities are being pushed into Home windows not as a result of customers need them, however as a result of Microsoft must justify its large AI investments.
In October, for instance, Microsoft introduced new options together with “Hey Copilot” voice activation, a redesigned taskbar with Copilot inbuilt, and the enlargement of “Copilot Actions” agentic capabilities past the browser to the PC itself.
“They’re fascinated by income initially,” longtime tech journalist and Microsoft observer Ed Bott stated on the GeekWire Podcast on the time. The extra customers depend on these AI options, he defined, the simpler it turns into for the corporate to upsell them on premium companies.
There’s a enterprise actuality driving all of this. In Microsoft’s most up-to-date fiscal 12 months, Home windows and Units generated $17.3 billion in income — basically flat for the previous three years.
That’s lower than Gaming ($23.5 billion) and LinkedIn ($17.8 billion), and a fraction of the $98 billion in income from Azure and cloud companies or the practically $88 billion from Microsoft 365 industrial.
By comparability, in fiscal 1995, 5 years after the launch of Home windows 3.0, Microsoft’s platforms group (which included MS-DOS and Home windows) represented about 40% of its whole income of $5.9 billion. Home windows was the expansion engine for the corporate.
Home windows is unlikely to play that sort of outsized function once more. However AI integration is the corporate’s greatest wager to return the OS to progress. Whether or not that finally seems like a restored Porsche or a rocket ship on the launchpad most likely doesn’t matter as a lot as maintaining it out of the junkyard.
