Extend declarative agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot with API plugins using Visual Studio Code: Review

The second module is called 'Build your first action'. This is where I expected to finally write some code. Instead, the exercise is to create a new folder, copy-paste a finished `openapi.yaml` file, copy-paste a finished `copilot-manifest.json` file, and then… look at it. That’s it. You don't build the API, you don't write the descriptions, you don't even run it against a local dev tenant to see if it works. It’s a reading assignment about what a manifest file contains, disguised as a lab.

I get that this is an intro, but it feels like a set of documentation pages strung together with a quiz at the end. The quiz questions are just about recalling which property in the JSON does what. You could get 100% just by having the docs open in another tab. There’s no thinking involved. The part on Adaptive Cards was slightly more useful because it shows the JSON payload, but again, you’re not building a card that pulls from your new API. You’re just looking at a static example.

The whole thing feels like it's missing the actual project. It's like a recipe that lists the ingredients but skips the cooking instructions. I spent an afternoon on this, and while I now know the names of the fields in a manifest, I couldn't tell you how to debug one if it failed. The longer 5.5-hour path on declarative agents seems like it must contain the actual hands-on parts that were cut from this one.