Microsoft makes its agent sandbox generally available on Windows 11, with OpenAI's Codex already in it and Claude Code coming
At a Windows event Microsoft pitched “hybrid intelligence”, agents that run on the PC or in the cloud, and put the first RTX Spark PCs on pre-order for 16 October shipping.
Why it matters: Windows now ships, as a general-availability feature, a container for third-party agents that most of the big agent makers have signed up to. That moves the question of what an agent can touch on a work PC from each agent maker to the operating system, and to the IT teams that manage it.
Microsoft used a Windows event on 7 October to recast the operating system as a place where AI agents run, on the device when they can and in the cloud when they must. In a post the same day, Windows chief Pavan Davuluri wrote: “Today, Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), becomes generally available on Windows 11.” MXC is Microsoft's container for running agents on Windows.
Microsoft names the agents that already work with MXC: Codex from OpenAI, GitHub Copilot, OpenClaw, Replit, LM Studio, OpenShell from Nvidia and Unsloth AI. Anthropic's Claude Code, Box, Egnyte, Hermes Agent by Nous Research, Manus, Perplexity and others are listed as coming soon. The post also says Muse for Windows, Meta's personal agent, is coming as a native Windows app with MXC integration.
On models, Microsoft says MAI Code 1.1 Flash, “a 137 billion total and 6.8 billion active parameters” model, is coming to devices at 3-bit precision, and that DeepSeek V4 Flash, a 284-billion-parameter model, runs locally on RTX Spark. A router called HydraFusion is coming to GitHub Copilot, in experimental preview in the command line and Visual Studio Code later in October. Microsoft claims that across Copilot+ PCs “over 2 trillion inferences are run locally per month.”
On hardware, RTX Spark Windows PCs from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Surface are “available for pre-order starting today and begin shipping October 16.” Fortune reports the Surface Laptop Ultra at $2,599 and a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at $5,999, coming in November. “Some of the features Microsoft has shown off, however, are not yet available,” Fortune notes.
- Confirmed Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) became generally available on Windows 11 on 7 October. Windows Experience Blog (Pavan Davuluri)
- Confirmed Microsoft lists Codex, GitHub Copilot, OpenClaw, Replit, LM Studio, Nvidia's OpenShell and Unsloth AI as working with MXC, and Claude Code, Hermes Agent, Manus and Perplexity among those coming soon. Windows Experience Blog
- Claimed Microsoft says over 2 trillion inferences are run locally each month across Copilot+ PCs. Windows Experience Blog
- Reported Fortune reports the Surface Laptop Ultra at $2,599 and the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at $5,999, and says some features shown are not yet available. Fortune
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