[tbyfield]

📖 Description

Proposes an experimental Windows 365 for Agents (W365A) lifecycle backend for plan review before implementation. Adds only docs/development/plans/w365a-integration.md and its link in the development documentation index, in one commit.

The caller supplies the pool, service endpoints, human-user identity fields, and control-plane/data-plane tokens. Pool discovery/selection, token acquisition/refresh, remote pool-access probing, typed SDK publication, and scheduled live validation are outside this proposal's implementation scope. The proposed native executor flow reserves an existing Cloud PC, waits for readiness, executes sequential commands retaining guest state, and releases the reservation. Unsupported policy and execution modes remain explicitly rejected.

This is a proposal, not backend implementation or a production-readiness claim. No source, schema, SDK, CI, or walkthrough changes are included. The final plan is the approved content with normalized Git blob 16dc24b84062dc7aab446a015ad99f82da537bd4.

🔗 References

• Previous plan PR: docs: propose W365A integration plan #1608 (closed; this is a new draft PR).
• Feature authoring and design review
• Container lifecycle architecture

No tracking issue, maintainer-applied acceptance label, or CLA status was supplied or verified. Corresponding checklist items remain unchecked; this draft does not claim design approval.

🔍 Validation

Read the documented validation guidance in CONTRIBUTING.md, docs/development/build-and-test/pull-requests.md, and docs/development/build-and-test/ci-validation-infrastructure.md. Documentation-only changes do not require runtime tests.

Commands run from the plan worktree:

• git diff --check 1cc2dbd05e56cc18e882af87567047676299db4b HEAD — passed, no whitespace errors.
• & 'C:\Users\tbyfield\.copilot\session-state\77eb3721-de41-4520-b11b-ae862114389c\files\validate-w365a-plan.ps1' — passed. Session-only check verified titles/audience markers and balanced code fences in both Markdown files, and all 30 relative file links. The current plan contains no preview blob links. This does not check external service URLs or Markdown anchor targets; no validation script is added to the repository.
• git hash-object --path=docs/development/plans/w365a-integration.md docs\development\plans\w365a-integration.md — passed, exactly 16dc24b84062dc7aab446a015ad99f82da537bd4, matching the approved plan.
• git rev-list --count '1cc2dbd05e56cc18e882af87567047676299db4b..HEAD' — passed, exactly one commit above the original base.
• git log -1 --format='%H%n%T%n%P' — passed: HEAD 90a48676c56782dc54c132989d9d047256db74d7, tree f320a2398b1395aa77f817bde4a1492a727e2961, parent 1cc2dbd05e56cc18e882af87567047676299db4b; final approved tree preserved through the squash.
• git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r HEAD — passed, only the plan and docs/development/README.md.

Backend builds, runtime tests, DesktopControl interop, and live tenant/pool validation were not run for this documentation-only PR; no backend runtime evidence is claimed.

✅ Checklist

• Signed the Contributor License Agreement
• Linked to an issue
• For features or changes requiring a spec: linked the issue with maintainer-applied feature-accepted
• For implementation: linked the required approved and merged design/API spec, or explained why no spec is required
• Feature issue remains open unless this PR completes all agreed implementation, validation, and documentation
• Updated documentation (if applicable)
• Updated Copilot instructions (if build, architecture, or conventions changed)
• If this PR changes Cargo.lock, the dependency-feed-check check passes (see pull request builds)

📋 Issue Type

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Task

Microsoft Reviewers: Open in CodeFlow

[azure-pipelines]

Azure Pipelines:
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[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The plan omits required lifecycle validation coverage and does not explain how a fresh executor obtains the session ID needed to release the original reservation.

2 open issues

• Include checkout session ID in the executor release target · New
• Add scheduled live validation coverage to the backend delivery plan · New

What changed in this PR

Proposes an experimental Windows 365 for Agents backend for MXC container lifecycle operations. This documentation-only PR requests design review before implementation and makes no runtime or production-readiness claims.

Changes:

• Defines Cloud PC reservation, readiness, repeated command execution, and release behavior.
• Documents caller-owned authentication, unsupported policies, security constraints, delivery phases, and planned validation.
• Links the proposal from the development documentation index.

File	Description
docs/​development/​README.md	Adds the W365A integration plan link.
docs/​development/​plans/​w365a-integration.md	Defines the proposed backend’s scope, lifecycle, configuration, security, and validation plan.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

[Branden Bonaby (bbonaby)]

Hi tbyfield, just an FYI, we updated our contributing.md file recently. You should be able to see the new process we have in place here: https://github.com/microsoft/mxc/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#plan-features-together which should lead you to the feature spec template and guidance that you can use for this proposal. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!