Project Lobster: Building an AI Assistant with Agency and Memory
Microsoft Developer introduces Project Lobster and the early Microsoft Scout desktop experience, focusing on always-on AI agents that can coordinate work, surface risks earlier, and keep tasks moving with less prompting.
Overview
What Project Lobster / Microsoft Scout is exploring
The video describes an early Microsoft Scout desktop experience that Microsoft employees have been using to learn how always-on agents show up in real work.
Key themes called out:
- Agency: the assistant can take on coordination work rather than waiting for constant prompting.
- Memory: the assistant can retain context to help keep work moving.
- Surfacing risks earlier: the assistant can highlight risks sooner in the workflow.
Experimental availability via Frontier
The video explains that Microsoft is extending the early experience to Frontier organizations as an experimental release, so customers can explore how it fits into their workflows.
Access prerequisites
Access to the experimental release requires:
- Frontier enrollment
- Microsoft Intune policy configuration
- An opt-in attestation
- A GitHub Copilot license, after which users can download and install the desktop experience