Power Agent Tray: your Copilot Studio agent in the system tray

February 06, 2026

Want your Copilot Studio agent available everywhere on your Windows desktop without a full app window? Power Agent Tray lives quietly in your system tray, exposing your agent to any MCP-compatible client through stdio transport.

What it does

Power Agent Tray is a lightweight Electron app that runs in the background. It connects to your Copilot Studio agent and exposes it via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once running, any MCP client on your machine—VS Code, Claude Desktop, or custom tools—can chat with your agent.

The app handles all the authentication complexity for you. It uses MSAL with PKCE OAuth flow for secure Entra ID login, storing tokens safely using OS-level credential persistence (DPAPI on Windows). You sign in once, and the app remembers your session across restarts.

Here’s what you get:

• 🖥️ System tray integration — runs unobtrusively in your taskbar
• 🔌 MCP server — exposes Copilot Studio agents as MCP tools via stdio
• 🔐 MSAL authentication — PKCE OAuth flow for secure Entra ID login
• 🔒 Secure token storage — OS-level credential persistence
• 🚀 Auto-start — optional Windows startup registration

Tray menu options

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• npm 10+
• Azure Entra ID app registration
• Copilot Studio agent (published, with Direct Connect URL)

Azure app registration

1. Go to Azure Portal → App registrations → your app
2. Navigate to Authentication → Add a platform → Mobile and desktop applications
3. Add a custom redirect URI: http://localhost:3847/auth/callback
4. Save

This redirect URI works for all users—the app runs a temporary local server on port 3847 during login.

Setup

npm install

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your values:

CLIENT_ID=your-azure-app-client-id
TENANT_ID=your-azure-tenant-id
DIRECT_CONNECT_URL=https://your-environment.api.powerplatform.com/copilotstudio/...

Get the Direct Connect URL from Copilot Studio → Channels → Web app.

Build and run

npm run build       # Compile TypeScript
npm run start       # Build and launch tray app
npm run dev         # Build and launch (development)
npm run pack        # Build unpacked distributable
npm run dist        # Build installer (.exe)

When running, you’ll see the Power Agent icon in your system tray. Right-click for the menu.

MCP client configuration

Connect from VS Code, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client by adding this to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "power-agent-tray": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "<path-to>/node_modules/electron/dist/electron.exe",
      "args": ["dist/main.js", "--stdio"],
      "cwd": "<path-to>/Power Agent Tray"
    }
  }
}

💡 Tip: Use the Copy VS Code MCP config option in the tray menu—it generates a ready-to-paste config with correct paths.

Available MCP tools

Architecture

Power Agent Tray/
├── src/
│   ├── main.ts            # Electron main process, tray menu, entry point
│   ├── auth-service.ts    # MSAL PKCE auth + persistent token cache
│   ├── agent-client.ts    # Copilot Studio client wrapper
│   ├── mcp-server.ts      # MCP protocol server (tool definitions)
│   ├── logger.ts          # Rotating file logger
│   └── ui/
│       ├── chat-app.html  # MCP Apps interactive UI template
│       └── chat-app.ts    # MCP Apps client for rendering responses
├── assets/
│   └── electron.ico       # Tray icon
├── .env.example           # Environment variable template
├── mcp-config.json        # Sample MCP client configuration
├── vite.config.ts         # Bundles UI into single HTML file
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

When to use Tray vs Desktop

Power Agent Tray is designed for a specific use case: background MCP access.

Choose Power Agent Tray when you want your agent available to MCP clients without a visible UI. Choose Power Agent Desktop when you want a full conversational experience with voice and rich card rendering.

Get the code

🔗 Power Agent Tray on GitHub

Learn more

• Model Context Protocol documentation
• Copilot Studio documentation
• MSAL Node documentation
• Electron documentation