A runnable demo of @copilotkit/channels: a Microsoft Teams bot backed by a CopilotKit BuiltInAgent that shows streamed-by-edit replies, agent-rendered Adaptive Cards, and a human-in-the-loop approval gate, testable locally in the Microsoft 365 Agents Playground with no Microsoft credentials. It needs an OPENAI_API_KEY and an Intelligence key (free tier). The application depends on the umbrella and imports the Teams integration from @copilotkit/channels/teams.

A Channel runs only through the Intelligence runtime. The Teams adapter stays direct (it keeps the Playground/Teams ingress), but the runtime owns the Channel's lifecycle: the bot is declared on new CopilotRuntime({ intelligence, identifyUser, channels: [bot] }) and started by mounting the node listener — listener.channels.ready() waits until it is live and .stop() tears it down. There is no bot.start()/bot.stop(). That's why an Intelligence key is required even though no Microsoft credentials are.

Run it

From this directory (after pnpm install at the repo root):

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...              # or add it to .env (see .env.example)
export CPK_INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY=cpk-...          # Intelligence key (free tier)
pnpm start                                 # starts the bot on http://localhost:3978/api/messages

In a second terminal:

pnpm playground   # opens the M365 Agents Playground at http://localhost:56150

Then, in the Playground:

Ask anything → the agent replies, streaming in by message edit (a typing indicator first, then text that fills in as it's edited, following Teams' baseline post-then-updateActivity streaming model).
Ask for a summary, status, or any structured data → the agent calls the show_card tool and posts an Adaptive Card (header, facts, table).
Ask it to "announce X to the team" → it drafts the message, posts an Approve/Reject card, and only sends after you approve (the card updates in place to ✅/🚫).

That exercises the CopilotKit bot engine and the Teams adapter end-to-end: streaming, agent-rendered Adaptive Cards, and human-in-the-loop.

What's in here

app/index.tsx: the whole bot, covering an in-process BuiltInAgent runtime, the createChannel({ adapters: [teams()] }) wiring, an onMessage handler that runs the agent, and the agent-facing show_card tool.
app/human-in-the-loop/: the confirm_write approval gate and the Adaptive Card it posts. This is user-land code, not SDK code.

Use a remote agent

By default the example serves an in-process BuiltInAgent. To point the bot at a remote AG-UI endpoint (a deployed CopilotKit runtime, LangGraph, and so on) instead, swap the agent factory to read a URL from the environment:

agent: (threadId) => {
  const a = new HttpAgent({ url: process.env.AGENT_URL! });
  a.threadId = threadId;
  return a;
},

Connect to Microsoft Teams

The Playground needs no credentials; real Teams does. The high-level path:

Register the bot with Microsoft. Create an Entra app registration and note its Application (client) ID, Directory (tenant) ID, and a client secret. Create an Azure Bot resource that uses that app, enable the Microsoft Teams channel, and set its messaging endpoint to https://<your-host>/api/messages.
Give the bot the credentials. Set clientId / clientSecret / tenantId (the names the M365 Agents SDK reads) in the bot's environment. With them set, the bot acks each turn and runs the agent on a detached context, so HITL approvals can resume minutes later.
Build and upload the app package (below), then in Teams: Apps → Manage your apps → Upload a custom app.

The full step-by-step walkthrough is in the Microsoft Teams guide.

Build the Teams app package

The app package is the manifest + icons you sideload into Teams. Build it with:

pnpm package   # -> appPackage/appPackage.zip

The script (appPackage/package.mjs, dependency-free) reads your bot id from MICROSOFT_APP_ID / CLIENT_ID / clientId (env or .env) and injects it into the manifest, validates the manifest, and auto-generates placeholder icons if they're missing, so the committed manifest.json stays a placeholder and you never hardcode your id. See appPackage/README.md for details.

Files and charts (upload a CSV, get a chart)

The agent can read uploaded files and render charts. Upload a CSV and ask for a pie/bar chart: the bot parses the data and calls render_chart, which posts a native Teams chart (an Adaptive Card chart element, no image generation, no headless browser). How the file reaches the bot depends on where it's uploaded, because of a Teams limitation:

1:1 (personal) chat — the file is delivered to the bot inline (requires supportsFiles: true in the manifest, already set). Works with no extra setup.
Channel / group chat — Teams does not send the file to bots here, so the bot fetches it through Microsoft Graph. That needs two application permissions on the bot's Entra app, consented once by a tenant admin:
- Files.Read.All — download the file from SharePoint.
- Group.Read.All (or the manifest's RSC ChannelMessage.Read.Group, which a team owner can consent without a tenant admin) — read the channel message that references the file.
Without that consent the bot still works — it asks the user to paste the data inline (which also renders a chart). To verify the Graph chain in a tenant where you control consent before requesting it org-wide, run scripts/verify-graph-channel.ts (see its header).

Charts render natively in the Teams client, so there's nothing extra to install (no Chromium, no headless browser). Native charts need a Teams app manifest at version 1.25+ (already set in appPackage/manifest.json).

Deploy

The bot is a plain HTTP service: it serves POST /api/messages (plus a /healthz liveness probe) and binds PORT, so it runs anywhere a Node process does. Teams is an inbound webhook, so the service needs a public URL: point your Azure Bot resource's messaging endpoint at https://<your-host>/api/messages.

Deploy as a workspace member (built from source)

This example consumes @copilotkit/channels (and @copilotkit/runtime) via the workspace:* protocol, so it always builds from the in-repo source — not the npm registry. The Teams integration is imported from the umbrella's @copilotkit/channels/teams subpath. That decouples the deploy from publishing: a change to packages/** redeploys with the new code immediately.

Because it's a workspace member, the deploy must run from the repo root so the workspace and packages/** are visible. The bot runs its BuiltInAgent runtime in-process (on RUNTIME_PORT, localhost-only), so it's a single service — no separate runtime process. On Railway (or any host), set:

Setting	Value
Root Directory	repo root (`/`)
Build Command	`pnpm install && pnpm --filter teams-example build`
Start Command	`pnpm --filter teams-example start`
Watch Paths	`packages/`, `examples/teams/`, `pnpm-lock.yaml`, `package.json`

pnpm --filter teams-example build builds @copilotkit/channels and @copilotkit/runtime; Nx brings the Teams adapter in transitively through the project graph, so tsx runs against fresh dist. The Watch Paths are what make a packages/**-only change trigger a redeploy. On Railway, generate a public domain on the service (Settings → Networking); it routes to $PORT, which the bot listens on for /api/messages.

Copying this example out of the monorepo? Replace the workspace:* range for @copilotkit/channels with version 0.2.0 or later (for example, @copilotkit/channels: ^0.2.0), retain the @copilotkit/runtime dependency, and import the Teams APIs from @copilotkit/channels/teams.

Set the environment for wherever you deploy:

OPENAI_API_KEY (required): the bot runs a BuiltInAgent and exits at startup without it.
OPENAI_MODEL (optional): defaults to openai/gpt-5.5.
CPK_INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY (required): the Intelligence runtime that owns the Channel lifecycle. A Channel runs only through Intelligence, so the bot exits at startup without it (free tier is enough). No URLs to configure — the SDK defaults to cloud-hosted CopilotKit Intelligence. COPILOTKIT_API_KEY is a deprecated alias, still read as a fallback.
COPILOTKIT_INTELLIGENCE_URL / COPILOTKIT_INTELLIGENCE_WS_URL (optional): point the bot at a self-hosted or dev Intelligence deployment. Set both or neither: the API and realtime planes are separate hosts (api.intelligence.copilotkit.ai vs realtime.intelligence.copilotkit.ai), so the websocket URL cannot be derived from the API URL by swapping the scheme, and setting one alone leaves the other plane on the managed platform. Getting the websocket host wrong does not produce an error; the Channel sits in connecting until it times out.
CHANNELS_PORT (optional): port for the Intelligence runtime that owns the Channel (loopback-only, default 8300).
clientId / clientSecret / tenantId: needed to reach real Teams (see above). The in-process BuiltInAgent runtime stays on RUNTIME_PORT (localhost-only, default 8200).

Note: the conversation store and pending HITL approvals are in-memory, so they do not survive a restart. Swap in a durable store before relying on long-lived approvals in production.