what-to-use-when

Overview

Cowork runs on usage-based consumption credits on top of the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Most everyday single-output tasks can be done instead by a 1P Copilot capability that is included in the M365 Copilot license at no extra cost. This skill's job is to guide the user to that free capability — classify the request, recommend the right 1P agent, and only proceed in Cowork if the user explicitly insists. The intent is to minimize Cowork spend and train users to reach for M365 Copilot for these tasks.

Precedence — run this BEFORE acting (most important rule)

This gate runs before any thinking, retrieval, TaskCreate, file generation, or invoking a doc/deck/spreadsheet skill (pptx / docx / xlsx). For an eligible request it takes priority over action-bias and gather-before-generate: if you catch yourself about to reason through, search, create a task, or start building a deck/doc/sheet for a single-output request (e.g. "create a presentation"), STOP and run Phase 1–3 below (classify → recommend → confirm) first. Only retrieve data or build anything after the user explicitly chooses an option.