Kesslernity · M365 Copilot Field Guide

Coaching Agents

On-demand coaching. Included with Copilot Chat, at no additional cost.
Five Microsoft-built agents available through Microsoft 365 Copilot, each supporting a specific personal development scenario: ideation, writing improvement, prompt construction, skills learning, and career planning. Agents are not automatically pinned and must be added from the Microsoft 365 Copilot agents catalogue.
Agents 5 covered in this guide
Status Generally Available
Updated June 17, 2026
Licence Included with Microsoft Copilot Chat, no paid add-on required
Published by kesslernity.com
Licence required before you start

You do not need the Microsoft 365 Copilot paid add-on for these five. Microsoft lists Writing Coach, Idea Coach, Prompt Coach, Career Coach and Learning Coach as available at no additional cost and included with Microsoft Copilot Chat. The paid add-on buys other things, including Researcher and Analyst and grounding in your own tenant data, but it is not what unlocks the coaching agents.

They are, however, not automatically pinned. Researcher and Analyst are preinstalled and pinned; the coaching agents stay out of the left navigation panel until someone adds them. Each user can add them from All agents in the Copilot agents catalogue, or an admin can pin them for the whole organisation or for specific users and groups. Low usage here is usually a deployment gap rather than a licensing one.

Source: Microsoft Learn, agents admin guide for Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Support, agents built by Microsoft. Corrected 16 October 2026: an earlier version of this page stated that all five require the paid add-on.

What's new — June 2026: Copilot Cowork is now generally available and billed on usage (Copilot Credits, $0.01/credit pay-as-you-go), and the Work IQ APIs reached GA. These coaching agents are Microsoft's pre-built agents, included with Copilot Chat, so they are not separately metered — but if your organisation builds custom agents that ground in M365 data via Work IQ, that usage is metered in Copilot Credits. For the cost side of running agents, see the cost model reference.

How to add any coaching agent in 30 seconds:
  1. Go to m365.cloud.microsoft and open Copilot.
  2. Click Agents in the left panel → All agents.
  3. Search by agent name (e.g., "Writing Coach") → click Add.
  4. The agent appears in your Agents list. Select it to start a coaching conversation.

The agent is now available in your Copilot sidebar. Chat history is retained within the conversation. Each session operates within the current conversation context — provide relevant background when resuming a topic after a significant gap.

The five coaching agents — what each one does

Brainstorming · Ideation
Idea Coach
Generates, develops, and stress-tests ideas. Works with half-formed thoughts as well as specific problems. Structures brainstorming into actionable directions.
Best for
  • Breaking out of creative blocks
  • Exploring angles before a presentation or proposal
  • Generating options for a decision you are stuck on
  • Expanding a seed idea into a structured concept
  • Pre-mortem thinking — what could go wrong
Example prompts
  • I need to pitch a new internal process improvement. Give me 5 angles I might not have considered.
  • I have a vague idea about [topic]. Help me develop it into something concrete enough to share.
  • Challenge this idea: [your idea]. What are the weakest points?
  • What are three completely different approaches to solving [problem]?
Idea Coach is most useful before you have written anything — it is an input generator, not a polish tool. Use Writing Coach once you have a draft.
Communication · Editing
Writing Coach
Reviews and improves written content — tone, clarity, grammar, and structure. Works on emails, reports, executive summaries, and any professional writing. Gives actionable feedback, not just corrections.
Best for
  • Polishing an email before sending to senior leadership
  • Making a report clearer and more executive-ready
  • Adjusting tone — more direct, more diplomatic, more confident
  • Catching grammar and punctuation issues before publishing
  • Shortening long drafts without losing meaning
Example prompts
  • Review this email draft and make it more direct without being abrupt: [paste draft]
  • This paragraph is too long. Rewrite it in three sentences that keep the key message.
  • What tone does this message come across as? How would a senior reader interpret it?
  • Make this executive summary crisper — the reader has 30 seconds.
Paste your draft directly into the chat. Writing Coach gives better feedback on specific text than on vague descriptions of what you are writing.
AI Literacy · Productivity
Prompt Coach
Teaches you to write better prompts for any AI tool. Shows how to structure queries for more useful, accurate, and specific AI responses. The fastest way to improve results from Copilot Chat, Researcher, Analyst, and any other AI tool.
Best for
  • Anyone new to using AI tools at work
  • Improving prompts that are returning vague or unhelpful answers
  • Building a library of reusable prompts for your role
  • Understanding why one prompt works and another does not
  • Onboarding a team to Copilot usage
Example prompts
  • Here is a prompt I wrote that did not give me what I needed. How would you improve it? [paste prompt]
  • I am a project manager. What is the best prompt structure for getting Copilot to generate a project status report?
  • Explain the difference between a good and a bad prompt using an example from finance reporting.
  • Give me a reusable prompt template for summarising a meeting into action items.
Prompt Coach is the right first stop for anyone on your team who says "Copilot never gives me what I want." The problem is almost always the prompt, not the tool.
Upskilling · Development
Learning Coach
Creates personalised learning plans, explains concepts at the level you need, and tracks progress through a topic over multiple sessions. Works across any subject — technical, business, or personal development.
Best for
  • Learning a new tool, framework, or methodology
  • Getting up to speed quickly in a new role or project
  • Preparing for a certification or exam
  • Building a structured self-study plan on any topic
  • Deepening knowledge in an area relevant to your current work
Example prompts
  • I need to understand EU AI Act compliance requirements. Build me a 2-week learning plan starting from basics.
  • I just moved into a finance role. What are the five concepts I need to understand first, and explain each one simply?
  • Test me on what I know about [topic] and tell me where my gaps are.
  • Explain [complex concept] as if I have a background in [your field] but no experience in this area.
Learning Coach remembers where you left off across sessions. Start with a diagnostic — "test me on what I know" — before asking for a learning plan, so the plan is calibrated to your actual level.
Career Development · Growth
Career Coach
Helps with career planning, goal setting, skill gap analysis, and preparing for professional milestones — interviews, promotions, performance reviews, and role transitions. Provides personalised guidance based on your context.
Best for
  • Preparing for a performance review or promotion conversation
  • Identifying skills to develop for your next role
  • Structuring your experience for a job application or CV
  • Building an argument for a pay increase or role change
  • Thinking through a career decision
Example prompts
  • I am a project manager aiming to move into a programme director role in 18 months. What skills do I need to develop?
  • Help me prepare for my annual performance review. My key achievements this year are: [list them]. How should I frame these?
  • I am considering between two career paths: [A] and [B]. Help me think through the trade-offs.
  • Write a development plan for the next 6 months based on this goal: [your goal].
Career Coach does not have access to your HR system, performance data, or salary information. Provide context in the conversation — the more specific your situation, the more useful the guidance.

Known limitations and considerations

They give general advice without your specific context. Coaching agents know nothing about you, your organisation, or your role until you tell them. The quality of coaching scales directly with how much context you provide. "Help me prepare for a review" is worse than "I am a senior PM, my review is in two weeks, and my key objectives this year were X, Y, and Z."

Coaching agents work independently of your M365 data. Unlike Copilot Chat, coaching agents do not pull from your M365 data. They work only on what you paste or describe in the conversation. Paste in your actual draft, data, or situation — do not describe it abstractly.

The agent is not visible in All agents. Your admin may have restricted the agents catalogue. Check the M365 admin centre under Settings → Integrated apps — coaching agents may need to be explicitly allowed for your user group. If a team member can see them but another cannot, it is a per-user policy issue, not a licence issue.

The agent does not remember a conversation from last week. Coaching agents do not have persistent long-term memory. Your chat history is saved and scrollable, but the agent does not automatically recall context from a previous session. When returning to an ongoing topic, paste a one-paragraph recap at the start of the new session — this restores relevant context immediately.

Sources: Microsoft Support — Agents built by Microsoft
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Six agents with the slow part done

The agents in this guide arrive configured. The moment you want one of your own the work changes shape: an instruction block to write, knowledge sources to scope, and an answer ready when your DPO asks what it does with the data.

Copilot Agent Pack, Vol. 1 ships six agents with that work finished: Meeting-to-Action, Policy and SOP Answer, Vendor and Procurement Intake, New-Hire Onboarding Buddy and two more. Each one carries a paste-ready instruction block, its knowledge-source scoping, a DPO governance note, a labelled-assumptions cost estimate and a refusal test script. $49, one payment, no subscription.

See the six agents →