Microsoft Agent Beta

Microsoft Agent Beta

About window of the Microsoft Agent Beta.
Name	Microsoft Agent Beta
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	October 28th, 1996 (29 years ago)
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Discontinued?	Yes

Microsoft Agent Beta is the beta release of Microsoft Agent. It was released and announced on the Microsoft Developer Network on October 28th, 1996. It was published on MSDN so that developers can learn how to utilize Microsoft Agent inside of software.

On December 22nd, 2025, the installer for Microsoft Agent Beta was discovered, and was later archived on TMAFE.COM that same day.

Characters

The Microsoft Agent Beta had only one compiled character, that character being Genie. However, this version of the Genie is drastically different internally, and instead of being in .ACS format, he instead comes in .ANI format, a file format that can only be generated by the Utopia Animation Editor, likely suggesting that Microsoft Agent initially started as an ActiveX wrapper for Microsoft Actor characters.

This is further confirmed by the fact that the Genie Microsoft Agent Beta file can be loaded inside of Microsoft Office 97, a Microsoft Actor 2.0 program and by the "genie.h" file, which has the following information:

genie.h

// HEADER FILE for Bob animation\actors\characters
// use these in code when calling Bob actor service

// ACTIONS

#define actionAXIdle  1
#define actionAXDeepIdle  2
...

Name difference

Microsoft Agent Beta also went alongside a different name called "AgentX". This is proven by documentation of earlier versions of Microsoft Agent, and also the Microsoft Agent ActiveX Control referring itself as AgentX.

<object id="AgentX" classid="CLSID:855B244C-FC5B-11CF-91FE-00C04FD701A5" width="100" height="51">

The "DelGenie.inf" file included with Microsoft Agent 1.5 also has mentions of the AgentX name, including all the files the Microsoft Agent Beta contained:

[TTSCopy]
cgrm_enp.dll

[GenieCopy]
AgentX.ocx
AXServer.exe
Char11.dll
Audman15.dll
;!lpc.dll
axhooks.dll
axmrshl.dll

[GenieOCA]
AgentX.oca

In addition, the installer for Microsoft Agent Beta is named "agent.exe" instead of "msagent.exe".

Builds

Build number	Source	Notes/Issues	Download
0.11.0.1025	WIN97CD on Internet Archive	genie.inf mentions this is the first time the program identifies itself as agent and that it is technically the 37th build.	https://tmafe.com/downloads/beta/msagent/AGENTbeta.zip

Gallery

• 
  Character Properties menu inside of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  User Properties menu inside of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  Input Properties menu inside of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  Output Properties menu inside of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  Speech Properties menu inside of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  Genie gesturing toward the Property Sheet in Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  About window of Microsoft Agent Beta.
• 
  Genie, a Microsoft Agent Beta character, being loaded inside of Office 97, a Microsoft Actor 2.0 program.

Trivia

• This version of Microsoft Agent was lost, until being discovered by a community member Konnor88 on December 22nd, 2025.
• It is likely that Microsoft Agent Beta was going to be a successor to Microsoft Actor as there were many menus that resembled other menus from Microsoft Bob.
• This version of Microsoft Agent was only published to developers who had access to the Microsoft Developer Network.