What are API plugins for declarative agents?
Declarative agents are intelligent assistants that build on the foundational model and orchestration of the Microsoft 365 Copilot. When you extend them with knowledge, they can reason over information that's not a part of their model. By adding to them skills, you give agents the ability to interact with external systems, trigger certain behavior under system conditions, or use custom workflow logic.
One type of skill is actions that allow a declarative agent to communicate with APIs both for retrieving and modifying data. You implement these actions using API plugins. API plugins allow declarative agents to call APIs. Plugins describe:
- The location of the API.
- How an agent should authenticate when calling the API.
- Functions, which represent the operations that the API can perform.
- The shape of data that the API expects in requests and returns in its responses.
API plugins consist of a definition that describes all this information and references API specification that contains information about the API. API plugin definition and the API specification are included in the Copilot extension package. The API itself is hosted outside of Microsoft 365, and typically belongs to the external system that it represents.
Declarative agents can use multiple API plugins connected to different APIs. This composability makes for a flexible architecture that allows you to support various scenarios.