I thought I’d heard it all when “vibe coding” became the best way to program an app from the ground up. Why learn to code when you use AI to do the real work?
But Microsoft is going one further with the rollout of “vibe working”—and this time, there might not be any coming back from it.
Microsoft wants you to embrace “vibe working”
Agent Mode is the fastest way to get through the workday
It’s not just me calling it “vibe working.” Microsoft’s official blog is welcoming a new dawn of AI-powered working through its Office apps, with Agent Mode rolling out across Microsoft 365 Copilot apps now.
In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development, the latest reasoning models in Copilot unlock agentic productivity for Office artifacts. Get started with a simple prompt and then work iteratively with Copilot—steering it as it orchestrates multi-step tasks to deliver high-quality Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Reading between the lines? Vibe working can help you skip to the end of work faster than ever before, pulling data from your recognized sources to help build out an Excel report or create a full PowerPoint presentation in a few short prompts.
Microsoft gives a few different examples, such as creating financial monthly close reports or building a business-specific loan calculator. But there are some caveats to unleashing it on your precious Excel spreadsheets without oversight.
SpreadsheetBench, a benchmarking tool that specifically evaluates how well an AI model can work with a spreadsheet, gave Agent Mode in Excel an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent, while humans are rated at 71.3 percent—ChatGPT scored 46.6 percent, for reference.
Similarly, Agent Mode in Word can be used to create monthly reports and executive summaries with simple prompts, or even to “clean up” a document before publication using a specific set of guidelines. Microsoft claims that the “deeper interaction means faster iteration, better ideas, and a more engaging writing experience.”
Productivity boost or yet more AI slop
It’s a race to the bottom, but there is still a long way to go
The big question is around how folks will actually use Microsoft’s vibe working tools. The uptick in vibe coding has been great for people who have an idea about what they want to build, but not necessarily the knowledge of how to build it.
However, I’ve already seen some interesting examples of how it might be used negatively, as well as the issues with allowing an AI agent to pull data into a report.
Well-known cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont received access to the new Agent Mode and promptly used it to create a series of fake spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Agent Mode did the job—but made up all of the information in each of the presentations.
So, while Agent Mode may well work when you provide it with information, there is a good chance you’ll still have to double-check everything it creates anyway. Where does it stop, and where do we go? Will we be reviewing vibe spreadsheets and vibe presentations with a vibe-coded app?
And with that 57.2 percent success rate, it’s sure to be a good time for everyone involved.
Agent Mode in Excel and Word is rolling out immediately to Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed customers and Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscribers currently signed up for the Frontier Program. Office Agent is rolling out similarly, but in the US only.
