Microsoft’s Windows chief wants to turn the operating system into an ‘agentic OS' – users just want reliability and better performance

Microsoft Windows chief Pavan Davuluri has made no secret of the tech giant’s plans for the future of Windows, having previously claimed the next version of the operating system will draw upon AI to offer users a more “multi-modal” experience.

With Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference looming this week, Davuluri has once again been banging the drum for an AI-infused Windows operating system, but users weren’t exactly pleased.

Promoting an upcoming session at the conference in a post on X earlier this month, Davuluri said Windows is “evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere”.

The buzzword-laden post prompted a fierce backlash, with users claiming “no one wants this”. Others, meanwhile, questioned why the tech giant is focusing on packing the operating system with new AI features instead of improving functionality, reliability, and performance.

Gergely Orosz, software engineer, author, and curator of the Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, pounced on the tweet, suggesting the automation push at Microsoft could alienate developers using the OS.

“Can’t see any reason for sq engineers to choose Windows with this weird direction they are doubling down on,” he wrote.

“So odd because Microsoft has building dev tools in their DNA…their OS doesn’t look like anything a builder who wants OS control would choose.”

Davuluri acknowledged the criticism in a response to Orosz’s post, noting that he had “read through the comments and see focus on things like reliability, performance, ease of use and more”.

The Windows lead insisted the company “cares deeply about developers” and that it still has “work to do on the experience” for developers and “power users”.

Exact details on how Microsoft plans to address these issues weren’t detailed in the response, however.

What on earth is an agentic OS?

Rory Bathgate

‘Agentic OS’ is a new term – so new that we recently did a whole podcast episode about it, live from Dreamforce 2025.

In the case of Salesforce, the term has some tangible meaning. The CRM giant has spent the past year integrating its agentic AI platform Agentforce across its offerings, and at Dreamforce 2025 unveiled sweeping changes to Slack that allow users to more closely control Salesforce agents through the collaboration platform.

Far from a buzzword, ‘agentic OS’ is used here as a pretty effective description of the vision Salesforce has for Slack’s future.

No one’s arguing that Slack will literally become an operating system. Instead, users are invited to treat the platform as a sort of natural language creator and scheduler for AI agents, a search engine for enterprise data, and a platform enhanced with built-in chat summarization powered by yet more agents.

With Windows, it’s trickier to nail down exactly what Microsoft is planning. Regardless of the fact that it’s increasingly swamped with AI features, there haven’t been any clear indications of how Windows as a whole will help users to create, augment, or launch AI agents.

With AI hype at fever pitch and workers continuing to voice doubts over promises that the technology will meaningfully improve their productivity, it’s important that AI developers speak as clearly as possible about their products.

Bandying around vague terms is a sure-fire way to be accused of peddling snake-oil or making empty promises. Worse still, it could erode the meaning of nascent AI terminology and make it a meaningless expression before the first products of its kind ever get off the ground.

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