If you think vibe-coding was an overhyped fad that could turn ideas into software, wait until you hear what Microsoft has cooked up for the rest of us mortals working with Office tools. Say hello to “vibe working,” a set of new AI-driven experiences that hope to take the drudgery out of studying documents and turning them into meaningful material.
What’s the big take?
Remember Deep Research, which takes a brief input, performs comprehensive research, and then creates a detailed report? Or the Researcher agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot that does the same with your own local files? Well, a similar convenience is coming to Office apps, starting with Word and Excel. And soon, in PowerPoint, as well.
Microsoft is officially referring to it as Agent Mode in Office apps. Think of it as an expert in Excel or Docs, but one that works for you with simple, natural language commands. For example, you can feed a line like:
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“Run a full analysis on this sales data set. I want to understand some important insights to help me make decisions about my business. Make it visual.”
Once you do that, the underlying Copilot AI will create the formulas, generate graphs, and create full-fledged Excel sheets. Likewise, in Word, the AI agent will sift through boring numbers and turn them into well-formatted documents featuring all the modifications you want.
There’s more for Copilot users
A few days ago, Anthropic announced that its Claude chatbot can now create as well as edit Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx), PowerPoint presentations (.pptx), Word documents (.docx), or PDF documents using natural language prompts. Users don’t even have to open these documents to make modifications, as Claude can handle it all in the background.
Well, a few days later, Microsoft announced that Claude will soon coexist with OpenAI’s GPT model in the Office suite. And today, the software giant is introducing Office Agent in Copilot. The core premise stays familiar. “Office Agent creates tasteful, well-structured PowerPoint decks and well-researched Word documents,” says Microsoft.
Agent Mode in Copilot for Excel and Docs will be available starting today for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscribers on the web, and will soon be available in the desktop apps, too. The Claude-powered Office Agent is also available for subscribers in the US starting today.