The AI vibes are spreading beyond the IT office. Microsoft is bringing the tenets of ‘vibe coding’, much espoused by AI companies, to general office work, which it has creatively termed ‘vibe working’. The company is bringing an AI agent to both Excel and Word, allowing users to automate certain complex or time-consuming tasks.
Microsoft feels the vibes
Agent Mode is designed as a slightly more powerful, better optimised version of Microsoft’s Copilot, which is also integrated into its Office suite. The AI agent can break down complex tasks and then uses OpenAI’s GPT-5 to turn the breakdown into steps that it executes. All a user has to do is sit and watch, after providing the initial prompt.
In Excel, Microsoft says that Office Agent has an accuracy rate of 57.2% in an AI spreadsheet editing benchmark called SpreadsheetBench. This score puts it ahead of other AI programs like Shortcut.ai, ChatGPT agent with .xlsx support, and Claude Files Opus 4.1, though it still lags behind a human accuracy of 71.3%. In Word, it can direct Copilot to draft content, suggest better edits, and lay out the steps needed to produce a certain document.
The new agent will also be available outside of what used to be called Microsoft Office through Copilot chat. Users can prompt the creation of a Word document or PowerPoint presentation without having to open the respective apps. Running on Anthropic models, Office Agent can create structured PowerPoint decks while doing web-based research, and it will even give live slide previews if you want them.
“Productivity is our DNA, we’re Office,” says Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office Product Group. “While others will try to replicate us, there is no substitute for the real thing.”
