Goodbye Agent Builder, Hello Copilot Studio Lite: Why ‘Lite’ Doesn’t Mean Lesser

Goodbye Agent Builder. Hello, Copilot Studio Lite!

Microsoft has announced that the Agent Builder experience you can access from Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is being rebranded as "Copilot Studio Lite"; or for clarity, the Microsoft Learn page dedicated to this feature now highlights, "[t]he lite experience of Copilot Studio in Microsoft 365 Copilot (formerly Copilot Studio agent builder) provides a simple interface that you can use to quickly and easily build declarative agents".

Microsoft's product documentation makes clear that "Lite" is for information workers whereas the full experience is aimed at "Makers and developers" but in my experience naming or branding that implies that one is the lesser or weaker version of the other pushes a lot of people to dismiss it.

No one should dismiss "Agent Builder" or "Copilot Studio Lite". There are lots of advantages to the declarative agents that are the default in this experience versus the custom agents that are default in the full Copilot Studio (you can use Copilot Studio to build declarative agents too, but this is somewhat more hidden than custom agents).

With declarative agents you leverage the power of Microsoft 365 Copilot, your agents integrate fully into Copilot Chat with useful features like agent chaining just working without any additional considerations, and you can layer on top of all of your data in a completely seamless way.

In Copilot Studio (full) you can add certain capabilities to declarative agents that you cannot in Copilot Studio Lite, but many of these are also extremely easy to add in code using Visual Studio Code, simple to leverage integrations, and a straightforward agent definition standard. But it's important to understand that these more powerful declarative agents are still 100% distinct from Copilot Studio's custom agents.

In my opinion, agent builder may now be being described as the "lite" option but shouldn't be dismissed as the lesser tool. If your business need can be delivered there, it's probably the right place to build.

What do you think of this rebrand? Does it make it easier or harder to describe the ideal path for building different types of agents?

Generated with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

First posted on Linkedin on 09/16/2025 -> View Linkedin post here