We can build it. Can we judge it?

Microsoft has moved a team of designers into VS Code with GitHub Copilot and built Mini-Foundry, a lighter modular version of its product now used by more than 100 designers and product managers.

• The team says loading and testing the full production application was slowing exploration and stakeholder feedback, so UX engineers created the lighter version with shared components, relevant data and repository-specific agent skills.
• Designers learn Git through that work, creating branches, making commits and building on one another's changes.
• The UX engineering team is also developing a journey rubric Lab around the principle "checked when possible, judged when needed", where each rubric packages criteria, examples, executable checks or judging prompts, and a report.
• Deterministic checks verify specific requirements while model-based assessments interpret evidence against criteria and labeled examples, and those judgments can vary between runs, making repeated evaluation and human calibration important.