Microsoft Word, Excel get a major ChatGPT boost with new Agent Mode - welcome to the world of "vibe working" (www.techradar.com)

Microsoft announced a new “Agent Mode” for Word and Excel and an Office Agent for Copilot Chat, part of its “vibe working” push where AI generates work products that humans review and refine. In Excel, Agent Mode uses GPT-5 reasoning models to break down complex spreadsheet tasks step-by-step—deciding formulas, creating sheets and building visualizations from simple prompts—while Word’s Agent drafts, refines and formats documents (for example, applying brand rules, title-casing headers, or italicizing external mentions). Office Agent in Copilot Chat takes a broader end-to-end approach—conducting deep research and producing usable content—and, notably, will run on Anthropic’s Claude models rather than Microsoft’s prior GPT stack. Agent Mode is rolling out on the web via the Frontier program (desktop coming soon); Office Agent is initially US-only on the web. For the AI/ML community this signals a move from single-model assistants to multi-model, agent-driven workflows that democratize expert features (making advanced spreadsheet reasoning and document polishing accessible to non-experts). The use of GPT-5 for reasoning tasks and Claude for end-to-end agents highlights model-specialization and multi-vendor strategies, raising questions about interoperability, reliability, and human-in-the-loop oversight. Technically, the push emphasizes chain-of-thought style stepwise reasoning in production apps, more autonomous agent orchestration, and tighter UX integration for iterative human fine-tuning—an important blueprint for enterprise AI deployment and governance.