Build your first action for declarative agents with API plugin by using Visual Studio Code: Review

That giant manifest JSON in the exercise unit is pretty much the entire 'course'. I was expecting to build an API or at least write some functions, but the main task is just copying their pre-written OpenAPI description into a file. The Teams Toolkit sets up the scaffolding, which is nice, but then you just paste. I finished the exercise and felt like I hadn't learned how anything actually worked, just how to follow a recipe.

My main frustration is the unstated prerequisite: a fully working Microsoft 365 Developer tenant. The module links to setting one up, but that's a whole separate project that can take hours or even days to get provisioned correctly. Without it, you can't test the plugin in Copilot, which is the entire point. So the advertised 30 minutes is misleading; it's 30 minutes if you've already spent a day getting your dev environment ready.

It feels like documentation that was repurposed into a 'learning module'. It shows you the final artifact—the declarative JSON manifest—but doesn't teach the design principles behind it. Why does the agent need `descriptionForModel`? How do you decide what goes into the operation details? The module doesn't explore this. It's a quick win for Microsoft to add a module to their catalog, but not a great learning experience. I had to go find the Adaptive Cards module afterward to make any sense of the UI part.