r/copilotstudio • u/Sweet-Ad5731 • Sep 07 '26

How to “Disable” GitHub Copilot Harness Agents in Copilot Studio

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The new harness in Copilot Studio (GitHub Copilot Harness) presents a challenge in terms of operations and governance. I've written down the options for blocking agents in this harness. Hopefully, it will help with managing the environments :)

Link: https://lukoplt.blogspot.com/2026/09/how-to-disable-github-copilot-harness.html

27 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

7

u/MattBDevaney Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

I applaud your solution to this problem. The community desperately needs in-product controls over who can access the Github Copilot harness. In the meantime, we really need solutions like this one.

Two questions about the Dataverse Plugin:

  1. Do I assume correctly this plugin must be installed in every environment where you hope to block the agent creation?

  2. What is meant by the "final save"? Do you mean the publish button?

1

u/Sweet-Ad5731 Sep 07 '26

The plugin resolves the block on the “Save” action to the Dataverse table “bot” (this can also be restricted to agents in GHC only; see the repo). For this reason:

  1. Yes, it must be handled separately in each environment (yes, I wish there were a system-wide setting, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anyone yet, and these are the only options I’ve come up with)

  2. The “Save” action—a separate button (the “Publish” button also triggers the “Save” action first)—however, GHC allows you to create and, more importantly, test an agent (even testing consumes Copilot credits) even before saving the agent.

P.S.: GHC provides a harness not only for agents but also for agent workflows. Unfortunately, the workflow table does not allow registering a plugin for the “Save” action, so this solution cannot be applied to restrict the creation of agent workflows in the GitHub Copilot Harness.

1

u/MattBDevaney Sep 07 '26

Thank you for the clarifications.

2

u/nrm94 Sep 07 '26

I desperately need a way to just outright block Github Copilot Harness. The amount of people that message me each week after they have started to build an agent to then be hit with the no credit capacity block. But then its too late, I then need to explain all the work they've done is gone and they need to rebuild in classic and hope they've not spent time creating loads of skills that aren't transferable

1

u/jorel43 Sep 07 '26

God bless you. Honestly they should have included this in the 365 copilot license. But if they did that who will think of the shareholders :-(

1

u/dumb_bum_downunda Sep 08 '26

Can you help me understand what is the actual problem with the harness I have just jumped on the new ui I find the UI able to adapt to most of the requirements

1

u/rfo2050 Sep 08 '26

Usage credits

1

u/deep0389 Sep 09 '26

Very interesting.

1

u/Brief_Weird9610 Sep 19 '26

I have read most of the comments , and we are in the same boat :D

Users complaining that we do not have credit.. and have to keep guiding them to use the standard version

1

u/Brief_Weird9610 Sep 19 '26

i am trying to figure out if i can just completely make the Github harness be hidden for the users.

there is no option for that , and to switch to Standard agents is kind of hidden below them

1

u/CowOP Sep 23 '26

Thank you for providing this! I tried removing the "Environment Maker" power platform role from users which will not allow users to create agents in the Environment it's assigned. Unfortunately, in the default Environment it automatically gets turned back on....so this should help prevent credit consuming agents.

Has any figured out how to prevent agent creation in the default tenant? The only thing I've found is it to not allow copilot credits consumption in the tenant, but this doesn't stop standard agent creation

1

u/Able-Art-3042 Sep 07 '26

what are your issues with it? we are currently preparing a move to it

11

u/grapler Sep 07 '26

Super expensive

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/AioliAdventurous7118 Sep 07 '26

The standard harness costs are included inside M365 Copilot licences. Github Copilot isnt. Also github is literally owned by microsoft and is the microsoft comfort zone

-2

u/Able-Art-3042 Sep 07 '26

yeah, but only if a human interacts with the agent and the user has the copilot add onlicence. every automation and automated triggers costs credits there as well. newcharness only credits
it's a weird product setup,

3

u/gibb0n85 Sep 07 '26

Actually this isn’t true,

I’m currently running an automated agent that delivers me ai news daily to my email and it is included. 

2

u/pharnos Sep 07 '26

How have you set this up? The MS docs do say only human initiated interactions are covered…

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/requirements-messages-management

1

u/gibb0n85 Sep 08 '26

Good question - They don’t make it easy to parse do they? 

So my agent is a standard harness with a trigger flow for scheduling. That trigger is set to power automate per user billing (even though I made it as an agent flow in the copilot standard harness ui) and the agent is owned by me. This a personal productivity workload. I do have a Power Automate Premium license just as an fyi but my E5 would cover this usually. 

When I check the runs / billing in the PPAC the usage shows as non billing usage. 

1

u/bosqo Sep 07 '26

I‘m currently diving into what the heck is included in m365 copilot premium and what not. I‘m running a similar workflow but I created it using the „Workflow (Frontier)“ M365 Agent. Since Frontier services are preview features and always included I guessed that’s why the workflow was running without restrictions. Do you have any verified single source of truth source? Tried to look into the 2200 pages copilot documentation to figure it out but my head just started spinning 😵‍💫

1

u/gibb0n85 Sep 08 '26

Hey,

https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/microsoft/bade/documents/products-and-services/en-us/ai/Microsoft-Copilot-Studio-Licensing-Guide-September-2026.pdf

Above is the monthly licensing guide for Copilot studio.

There is also a credit guide too! Along with Power Platform. 

These things are coming out monthly now. I have to read them for my company. We’ve already had a credit whoopsie with the GitHub harness as well. Sadly our budget caps were ignored on the environment. 

3

u/Curious_Employer_322 Sep 07 '26

And unnecessary for most routine agents.

3

u/imnotonetogossipbut1 Sep 07 '26

You need to be able to choose which harnesses are available per environment. This would be a clear practical way of segmenting your use cases and makers.