Microsoft is trying to make 'vibe working' a thing (www.engadget.com)

Microsoft is pushing a new “vibe working” playbook — a marketed shift toward iterative, AI-driven human-agent collaboration inside Office. The company debuted two related features: Agent Mode (embedded in Word and Excel workflows today, with PowerPoint coming) and Office Agent in Copilot chat (which can create PowerPoint and Word outputs now, Excel coming). Agent Mode for Excel and Word is powered by OpenAI’s latest models; Office Agent in Copilot chat uses Anthropic models. Both let a user start with a single prompt and co-develop documents, spreadsheets or slides through iterative dialogue, and they’re available now through Microsoft’s Frontier program (web-only for Word/Excel at launch; desktop support is forthcoming). Technically and practically, the announcement signals Microsoft’s effort to democratize advanced Office capabilities — for example, an Agent Mode that can “speak Excel” aims to bring spreadsheet power to non-experts. But performance is mixed: Copilot Agent Mode scored 57.2% on the SpreadsheetBench benchmark versus a reported 71.3% human score, underlining real accuracy gaps (and unclear human baseline details). The tooling could boost productivity and lower skill barriers, but it still requires human oversight, raises questions about learning and quality of outputs, and will need further accuracy and UX refinement before replacing expert workflows.