Building Declarative Copilot Agents with Custom Knowledge in VS Code

Standard AI assistants are powerful, but they often lack access to your specific organization's proprietary data. By building custom declarative agents, you can bridge this gap and bring your own knowledge bases directly into the Copilot ecosystem. This text-only course guides you through the process of designing, configuring, and deploying declarative agents. You will learn to use Visual Studio Code to write agent manifests, integrate external data sources via connectors, and ensure secure, reliable data retrieval. What you'll learn: Understand the core architecture of declarative agents and how they extend Copilot capabilities; Configure agent manifests and schemas within Visual Studio Code using modern JSON standards; Integrate external data repositories using Copilot connectors and secure API endpoints; Apply retrieval-augmented generation principles to ensure highly relevant agent responses; Implement secure authentication flows to protect sensitive enterprise data; Test and debug your custom agents directly inside your development workflow. The course begins with foundational concepts of declarative AI agent architecture and manifest files. From there, you will progress to hands-on configuration of connectors, API mapping, and security protocols to make your agent production-ready. This course is designed for software developers, IT professionals, and system integrators who are new to building AI agents. No prior experience with agent development is required, though a basic understanding of JSON and APIs is helpful. Start reading today to unlock the full potential of custom AI agents in your daily workflow.