Declarative agents

A declarative agent is a Microsoft 365 Copilot agent you build by describing what it should do — its name, instructions, knowledge sources, actions, and conversation starters — rather than by writing code. Copilot itself provides the language model, the orchestrator, and the runtime. You provide the configuration.

In WIQD, the plugin is the app package you build and ship. A declarative agent is one component you can compose into that package, alongside skills and connectors. It adds a conversational experience; it is not required for skill-only or connector-only plugins.

For a new project, start with wiqd plugin create, then use wiqd plugin add agent when you need this component. Existing wiqd agent projects and commands remain supported; they represent the agent-focused app-package workflow, not a requirement to start every plugin with an agent.

That configuration lives in a small set of JSON files inside an “app package”:

appPackage/manifest.json — the M365 app shell (id, version, icons, permissions, where the agent shows up).
appPackage/declarativeAgent.json — the agent itself (name, description, instructions, capabilities, actions, conversation starters).
appPackage/instructions.txt — the natural-language system prompt.
Optional API plugin manifests for actions that call REST APIs you own.

Why a CLI for this?

Editing JSON by hand works, but you quickly hit friction:

The manifest schema is large and changes over time.
Provisioning, packaging, and publishing involve several different services (Teams Toolkit, the M365 catalog, your tenant).
Validation runs against the current shipping schema, not last week’s.
You want the same workflow on your laptop, in CI, and inside VS Code.

Work IQ Dev Tools guide the whole plugin lifecycle — compose, validate, provision, package, share, and submit to your tenant catalog — through natural language or the CLI. Agent-specific commands let you evaluate a deployed declarative-agent component; they do not evaluate all plugin capabilities.

What Work IQ Dev Tools don’t change

Work IQ Dev Tools do not replace Copilot or the M365 platform. Under the hood they use the bundled wiqd Core lifecycle backend for scaffold/provision/package/share/publish/delete, and the Work IQ service for monitoring. You can still drop down to platform tools directly when you need to — Work IQ Dev Tools make the common path fast and consistent.

Go deeper

Build a Plugin — the end-to-end plugin lifecycle
Agent component lifecycle — the agent-specific flow and existing projects
Host vs extensions — how Work IQ Dev Tools route each command
wiqd plugin add agent — compose an agent into your plugin
wiqd plugin create — the supported agent-focused project workflow
wiqd plugin show — see what’s in the local plugin project
wiqd Core extension — the upstream tool that owns the manifest format