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Meet Autopilot (formerly Microsoft Scout)

Before you turn anything on, get the map: Microsoft Scout is now Autopilot — Microsoft's always-on agent. This is the field guide to what changed, what it does, and how it's paid for.

Stage: Autopilots · For: Everyone · Level: Starter · Time: 10 min · No access required

When to use this

Start here. Microsoft Scout is now Autopilot (renamed September 2026) — the product. Autopilots is this stage of the ramp: always-on agents that keep working between your prompts. No access needed to read this — it's the Day-1 step before you find out whether you can turn it on.

What you'll need

Try it now — the prompt

You can't run this until Autopilot (or the Scout desktop app) is switched on for you — that's the next page — but this is the shape of how you'd brief it once it is: a role, a goal, and boundaries.

You're my chief-of-staff for the week. Goal: nothing important sneaks up on me.
Keep an eye on my calendar and inbox. When a meeting needs prep, pull the materials
together and flag it to me before it starts — and tell me about anything that looks
like it's stalling. Check with me before you send or change anything other people see.

Why this framing works: it gives Autopilot a role ("chief-of-staff"), a standing goal rather than a one-off task, the outcomes you care about, and the human-in-the-loop boundary up front — which is exactly how Microsoft describes directing it.

Step by step

This is a read-and-orient step, not a click-through. Here's how to use it:

  1. Fix the names in your head. Scout → Autopilot (the product). Autopilots = this stage. If you only remember one thing, remember that.
  2. Map its reach to your day. Teams, Outlook, chats, channels, documents, calendar — note which of those hold the work you'd want watched.
  3. Note the budget question. Autopilot draws Copilot Credits on top of the Microsoft 365 Copilot license, so a pilot needs an admin-approved spending policy as well as access.
  4. Pick a candidate job. Choose the one standing job you'd hand it first — meeting prep, follow-ups, a weekly report. You'll carry it into the access and coordination walkthroughs.
Scout → Autopilot: the timeline
When What happened Source
June 2, 2026 Microsoft introduces Microsoft Scout, "your always-on personal agent," through the Frontier program. Announcement
June–Aug 2026 Learn publishes docs for the Microsoft Scout desktop app (Windows and macOS) — still the hands-on reference today. Scout docs
Sept 25, 2026 Scout is renamed Autopilot: a cloud-hosted "digital teammate," expanding to private preview at the end of September, billed with usage-based Copilot Credits. Announcement
What Autopilot is

Per the September announcement, Autopilot is your digital teammate:

  • You give it a name, a role and a goal, and it goes to work — watching channels, following up on threads, running recurring work, and picking a project back up days later, without waiting for a prompt.
  • It's cloud-hosted, so it keeps working while you're offline.
  • It lives in your tenant with its own identity, memory, computer and workspace, grounded in Microsoft IQ.
  • It shows up where you already work — Teams, Outlook, chats, channels and documents — and you can @mention it like a colleague, with permissions, audit and governance behind it.
What the Scout desktop app documents today

The concrete, documented capabilities still live on Learn under the Microsoft Scout name. The desktop app:

  • Works across your files, shell, browser, and Microsoft 365 — mail, calendar, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, Lists, and To Do — through Work IQ.
  • Runs automations on a schedule or a condition, plus a periodic heartbeat check, in the background.
  • Uses skills: SKILL.md instruction files you write once and reuse.
  • Asks for your approval before actions that send, share, or change what other people see.
  • Lets admins govern tools, models, and auto-approval through Intune / Group Policy.
How it's paid for

Microsoft now splits Copilot into everyday AI, covered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot user license, and advanced AI — long-running agentic work — on usage-based billing in Copilot Credits. Autopilot sits in the second group alongside Cowork and Code, and it requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot license for access (USL vs. usage-based billing). The Scout desktop app's docs add that it uses your GitHub account for token billing, which is why it also needs a GitHub Copilot Business or Enterprise license.

Screenshots

We deliberately don't ship screenshots that go stale — the Microsoft Copilot UI changes often. Follow the numbered steps above, which we keep current. Maintainers can regenerate fresh captures with the Playwright tool in tooling/screenshots/.

Make it better

  • Read the source, not the rumor. The September announcement and the Microsoft Scout docs are the ground truth while the product is in preview — anchor your team's expectations there.
  • Say "Autopilot (formerly Scout)" when you brief others. Half your audience heard "Scout" in June; bridging the names once saves a lot of confusion.
  • Decide your first standing job before you have access. Walking into the access step with a job already in mind turns "I have Autopilot now" into "Autopilot is already doing something useful."

Watch out for

  • Docs lag the rename. Learn still says "Microsoft Scout (Frontier)" for the desktop app. That's expected mid-transition — don't read it as two competing products.
  • "Always-on" is not "unsupervised." You set the objective and boundaries; actions that affect other people wait for your sign-off.
  • Always-on means always-metered. Background work draws Copilot Credits. Agree on a budget with your admin before you hand it anything open-ended.
  • It's private preview. Everything here is real but gated — reading this page doesn't mean you can turn it on yet. That's the very next step.

Where this leads (the ramp)

Now that you know what Autopilot is and how it's paid for, the only question left is whether you can get it — it's in private preview, so access has real prerequisites worth checking before you plan around it.

Next: Autopilots → Find out if you can get Autopilot — and turn it on

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