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CopilotForge - Microsoft Foundry

Use it in Copilot Cowork: download the Microsoft Foundry plugin for Copilot Cowork and upload it under Customize > Plugins > Upload plugin. How to install.

Engineer specialist and custom AI solutions where configured agents are insufficient.

Layer: delivery
Lead role: AI Engineer
Plugin name: copilotforge-ai-foundry

Skill Status Lifecycle Description

agentic-workflow-design draft Mobilise, Deliver, Improve Designs multi-step agentic workflows in Microsoft Foundry with bounded autonomy - the steps, which are deterministic and which are agentic, the decisions each agent may take alone, checkpoints, budgets, stop conditions and recovery. Use when a process spans several agents or steps, when a team wants an agent to run unattended, or when an autonomous prototype keeps looping or overreaching.

foundry-agent-architecture draft Mobilise, Deliver Architects a single agent, or a small set of cooperating agents, on Foundry Agent Service - its responsibilities, instructions, model, tools, knowledge, state, identity and the surfaces it is published to - so it can be built, secured and operated. Use when a Foundry agent has been approved, when an agent prototype needs a production design, or when a Copilot Studio agent is being rebuilt in Foundry.

foundry-cost-management draft Mobilise, Deliver, Measure, Improve Estimates, budgets and controls the running cost of a Microsoft Foundry solution - model consumption, reserved capacity, search, storage, compute and monitoring - with cost per outcome, tagging, budgets, alerts and named owners. Use when a Foundry build needs a cost estimate, when consumption spend is rising or unexplained, or when a team is choosing between pay-per-use and reserved capacity.

foundry-deployment-architecture draft Mobilise, Deliver, Launch, Improve Chooses how a Microsoft Foundry solution is deployed - model deployment type, data processing location, capacity and quota, resource and project layout, environments, network exposure and failover - and records each choice with its trade-off. Use when a chosen model needs deploying, when data must stay in a geography, when throttling or regional outages hit, or when a prototype must move into governed environments.

foundry-grounding-strategy draft Mobilise, Deliver, Improve Chooses how a Microsoft Foundry solution grounds its answers and actions - supplied context, retrieval over indexed content, live lookups through tools, web grounding or none - per knowledge need, with ownership, permissions, freshness and citation decided before retrieval is engineered. Use when a Foundry agent needs organisational knowledge, when answers are confidently wrong, or when a team proposes fine-tuning to teach facts.

foundry-observability draft Deliver, Launch, Measure, Improve Designs tracing and observability for Microsoft Foundry agents and applications in production - what each run records across model calls, retrieval, tool calls and checkpoints, how content is protected, which signals and online evaluations show quality drifting, and who looks. Use when a Foundry solution is heading to production, when a misbehaving agent cannot be explained, or when traces capture more personal data than anyone agreed.

foundry-production-readiness draft Assure, Launch Assembles and tests the evidence that a custom Microsoft Foundry solution is ready for live use - evaluation and safety results, security and identity, deployment and capacity, observability, cost controls, resilience, support, model lifecycle and rollback - and records a go, go with conditions or no-go. Use when a Foundry build is nearing release, when a pilot is about to widen, or when a partner hands over a solution.

foundry-prompt-engineering draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Engineers the system prompts and prompt templates of a Microsoft Foundry model or agent for production - structure, scope and refusal rules, grounding and citation instructions, output contracts, injection resistance - and keeps them versioned, reviewed and regression-tested like code. Use when a Foundry prototype prompt must become production-grade, when outputs drift after a prompt edit, or when prompts change outside source control.

foundry-safety-evaluation draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Configures content safety controls for a Microsoft Foundry solution - input and output filtering, prompt attack detection, groundedness and protected material checks, blocklists - and runs the builder's safety evaluations against the solution's harm profile so the release gate receives evidence. Use when a Foundry model or agent is being prepared for release, when filters block legitimate work, or after a harmful output.

foundry-solution-assessment draft Envision, Mobilise, Deliver Tests whether a need that has reached the engineered-solution rung really justifies a Microsoft Foundry build, and whether the organisation can own, fund and operate it, recording the case and its preconditions on a solution design. Use when suitability points to Foundry, when a team proposes pro-code AI before trying configured agents, or when a sponsor asks what a Foundry build commits the organisation to.

foundry-tool-design draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Designs the individual tools and functions a Foundry agent can call - name, description, input and output schema, side effects, identity, confirmation, error behaviour and limits - so the model calls them correctly and they cannot be misused. Use when an agent's tool list is agreed and each tool needs a contract, when an agent calls tools wrongly, or before a write action goes live.

mcp-integration draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Integrates Model Context Protocol servers with Microsoft Foundry agents safely - vetting who runs each server, allowing only the tools needed, authentication and identity, approval for consequential calls, pinning versions and handling changes in what a server offers. Use when a team wants to connect an MCP server to a Foundry agent, when an internal service should be exposed over MCP, or when a connected server changes its tools.

model-evaluation draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Runs the comparative evaluation that decides which candidate model, prompt or configuration performs a specific task best in a Microsoft Foundry solution - task-specific test set, quality and tool-calling measures, latency and cost per task, thresholds set before results, repeated runs and a written comparison. Use when a model shortlist needs testing, when a model version is being replaced, or when two configurations must be compared fairly.

model-selection draft Mobilise, Deliver, Improve Shortlists and selects models from the Microsoft Foundry catalogue, including partner and third-party models, against task fit, data handling, hosting terms, lifecycle, latency and cost, and records the choice and its fallback on a model selection record. Use when a Foundry solution needs a model, when a team asks for a specific third-party model, or when a model is being retired or replaced.

retrieval-design draft Deliver, Assure, Improve Designs the retrieval layer of a custom Microsoft Foundry solution - which content is indexed, how it is cleaned and chunked, which metadata and embeddings are kept, keyword, vector or hybrid search with reranking, permission trimming, freshness and how passages reach the prompt with citations. Use when a Foundry solution needs its own search index, when answers miss content that exists, or when retrieval returns content users should not see.

Skill	Status	Lifecycle	Description
`agentic-workflow-design`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver, Improve	Designs multi-step agentic workflows in Microsoft Foundry with bounded autonomy - the steps, which are deterministic and which are agentic, the decisions each agent may take alone, checkpoints, budgets, stop conditions and recovery. Use when a process spans several agents or steps, when a team wants an agent to run unattended, or when an autonomous prototype keeps looping or overreaching.
`foundry-agent-architecture`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver	Architects a single agent, or a small set of cooperating agents, on Foundry Agent Service - its responsibilities, instructions, model, tools, knowledge, state, identity and the surfaces it is published to - so it can be built, secured and operated. Use when a Foundry agent has been approved, when an agent prototype needs a production design, or when a Copilot Studio agent is being rebuilt in Foundry.
`foundry-cost-management`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver, Measure, Improve	Estimates, budgets and controls the running cost of a Microsoft Foundry solution - model consumption, reserved capacity, search, storage, compute and monitoring - with cost per outcome, tagging, budgets, alerts and named owners. Use when a Foundry build needs a cost estimate, when consumption spend is rising or unexplained, or when a team is choosing between pay-per-use and reserved capacity.
`foundry-deployment-architecture`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver, Launch, Improve	Chooses how a Microsoft Foundry solution is deployed - model deployment type, data processing location, capacity and quota, resource and project layout, environments, network exposure and failover - and records each choice with its trade-off. Use when a chosen model needs deploying, when data must stay in a geography, when throttling or regional outages hit, or when a prototype must move into governed environments.
`foundry-grounding-strategy`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver, Improve	Chooses how a Microsoft Foundry solution grounds its answers and actions - supplied context, retrieval over indexed content, live lookups through tools, web grounding or none - per knowledge need, with ownership, permissions, freshness and citation decided before retrieval is engineered. Use when a Foundry agent needs organisational knowledge, when answers are confidently wrong, or when a team proposes fine-tuning to teach facts.
`foundry-observability`	draft	Deliver, Launch, Measure, Improve	Designs tracing and observability for Microsoft Foundry agents and applications in production - what each run records across model calls, retrieval, tool calls and checkpoints, how content is protected, which signals and online evaluations show quality drifting, and who looks. Use when a Foundry solution is heading to production, when a misbehaving agent cannot be explained, or when traces capture more personal data than anyone agreed.
`foundry-production-readiness`	draft	Assure, Launch	Assembles and tests the evidence that a custom Microsoft Foundry solution is ready for live use - evaluation and safety results, security and identity, deployment and capacity, observability, cost controls, resilience, support, model lifecycle and rollback - and records a go, go with conditions or no-go. Use when a Foundry build is nearing release, when a pilot is about to widen, or when a partner hands over a solution.
`foundry-prompt-engineering`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Engineers the system prompts and prompt templates of a Microsoft Foundry model or agent for production - structure, scope and refusal rules, grounding and citation instructions, output contracts, injection resistance - and keeps them versioned, reviewed and regression-tested like code. Use when a Foundry prototype prompt must become production-grade, when outputs drift after a prompt edit, or when prompts change outside source control.
`foundry-safety-evaluation`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Configures content safety controls for a Microsoft Foundry solution - input and output filtering, prompt attack detection, groundedness and protected material checks, blocklists - and runs the builder's safety evaluations against the solution's harm profile so the release gate receives evidence. Use when a Foundry model or agent is being prepared for release, when filters block legitimate work, or after a harmful output.
`foundry-solution-assessment`	draft	Envision, Mobilise, Deliver	Tests whether a need that has reached the engineered-solution rung really justifies a Microsoft Foundry build, and whether the organisation can own, fund and operate it, recording the case and its preconditions on a solution design. Use when suitability points to Foundry, when a team proposes pro-code AI before trying configured agents, or when a sponsor asks what a Foundry build commits the organisation to.
`foundry-tool-design`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Designs the individual tools and functions a Foundry agent can call - name, description, input and output schema, side effects, identity, confirmation, error behaviour and limits - so the model calls them correctly and they cannot be misused. Use when an agent's tool list is agreed and each tool needs a contract, when an agent calls tools wrongly, or before a write action goes live.
`mcp-integration`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Integrates Model Context Protocol servers with Microsoft Foundry agents safely - vetting who runs each server, allowing only the tools needed, authentication and identity, approval for consequential calls, pinning versions and handling changes in what a server offers. Use when a team wants to connect an MCP server to a Foundry agent, when an internal service should be exposed over MCP, or when a connected server changes its tools.
`model-evaluation`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Runs the comparative evaluation that decides which candidate model, prompt or configuration performs a specific task best in a Microsoft Foundry solution - task-specific test set, quality and tool-calling measures, latency and cost per task, thresholds set before results, repeated runs and a written comparison. Use when a model shortlist needs testing, when a model version is being replaced, or when two configurations must be compared fairly.
`model-selection`	draft	Mobilise, Deliver, Improve	Shortlists and selects models from the Microsoft Foundry catalogue, including partner and third-party models, against task fit, data handling, hosting terms, lifecycle, latency and cost, and records the choice and its fallback on a model selection record. Use when a Foundry solution needs a model, when a team asks for a specific third-party model, or when a model is being retired or replaced.
`retrieval-design`	draft	Deliver, Assure, Improve	Designs the retrieval layer of a custom Microsoft Foundry solution - which content is indexed, how it is cleaned and chunked, which metadata and embeddings are kept, keyword, vector or hybrid search with reranking, permission trimming, freshness and how passages reach the prompt with citations. Use when a Foundry solution needs its own search index, when answers miss content that exists, or when retrieval returns content users should not see.

Credit

Created by Simon Foote as part of CopilotForge. Content is licensed under CC BY 4.0; keep the credit in each skill's license and authors fields when you share or adapt it. See NOTICE.md in the repository.