Hands-on: run the core Copilot loop in the free chat

Hands On · 15 minLast checked against the live product: 13 July 2026

30-second recall from earlier lessons

A friend says: 'AI chatbots are basically just search engines that write nicely.' What's the most accurate correction?Exactly right; they look facts up and phrase them well.Not quite; by default they predict likely text from training rather than looking facts up, which is why they can sound right yet be wrong.No; they're simply always more accurate than a search engine.It doesn't matter how they work, because they never make mistakes.

You ask ChatGPT to help write a work report and it gives you a confident paragraph with a specific statistic and a named study as the source. What's the wisest next step?Paste it straight into the report; it named a study, so it must be real.Find the named study yourself and confirm both it and the statistic are genuine before using them.Ask ChatGPT 'are you sure that study is real?' and trust it if it says yes.Remove the statistic but keep the study name, since names are usually accurate.

By the end, you'll be able to…

Complete the summarise, draft, refine and check loop end to end in the free chat
Verify a Copilot summary against its source and spot anything it dropped or invented
Keep private details out of a free, personal Copilot account

Why it matters

You learn these tools by using them, not by reading about them. This exercise uses the free Copilot chat, so you can do the whole thing without a licence and without spending anything. In fifteen minutes you'll summarise something, draft a reply from it, refine the result, and (the real skill) check it against the source. It's the same core loop the paid version runs inside Word and Outlook, just with text you paste in.

What you'll do

Using the free standalone Copilot chat, you'll run the loop that every other lesson in this phase points at:

Summarise a long piece of text.
Draft a reply based on that summary.
Refine it until it's good.
Check it against the original.

No licence needed. Anyone can do this. Set aside about fifteen minutes.

Before you start

Open the free Copilot chat at copilot.microsoft.com, or the Copilot app, or the Copilot icon in Windows or Edge.
Have a long-ish piece of text ready to paste: a newsletter, a long article, a chain of your own notes, anything with a few hundred words.
Keep it free of private details. On a free, personal account, no full names, addresses, account numbers or anything confidential (this is the Phase 0 privacy rule, and it matters most on a personal login). If your real text has those, swap them for made-up ones first.
No safe text of your own? Use the Fernway meeting notes: messy, realistic operations-sync notes, already safe to practise on. Everything below works with them.

The steps

Open a new chat. Start fresh so nothing from earlier gets mixed in.
Paste your text with a clear instruction. Name the shape you want:
Summarise with a named shapeCopilot
```
Summarise the text below in five bullet points, then list every action or decision with who owns it and any date. Mark anything with no owner as UNASSIGNED. Here's the text: [paste].
```
Why this works: It asks for a fixed structure (five bullets plus a dated-actions list) so you get something you can act on, and something you can easily check against the source afterwards.
Send it and read what comes back. On the Fernway notes, a good summary should surface the office-move decision, the expenses-form move, the unassigned holiday rota and summer social, and Tom's Harlow renewal.
Check the summary against your text; this is the actual skill. Go line by line. Did it catch the main points? Did it invent anything that isn't there, or quietly drop the two UNASSIGNED actions? If it missed something, tell it: "You left out the holiday-cover rota, which had no owner: add it."
Draft a reply from the summary. Imagine you must respond to whatever the text was about:
Draft from the summaryCopilot
```
Based on that summary, write a short, friendly email chasing the two unassigned actions so someone picks them up before the next sync. Under 100 words, warm in tone.
```
Why this works: It builds on the summary already in the chat and sets length and tone, so Copilot writes a real reply rather than a generic one. Keeping it in the same conversation preserves the context.
Refine at least twice. Don't accept the first draft; nudge it:
Refine with plain feedbackCopilot
```
A bit shorter, and warmer, less formal. Add a line offering to take the summer-social booking myself.
```
Why this works: Specific, concrete feedback steers the existing draft closer while keeping what worked, far better than re-prompting from scratch.
Notice how each reply builds on the last.
Read the final version aloud. If it sounds like something you'd actually send, you've done it. If not, one more nudge.

Your checklist

Tick these off as you go:

[ ] I opened a new chat in the free Copilot.
[ ] I pasted in text with no private details.
[ ] I got a summary and read it against the original.
[ ] I spotted at least one thing it dropped, invented or got wrong.
[ ] I asked Copilot to draft a reply from the summary.
[ ] I refined the draft at least twice.
[ ] I ended with something I'd be happy to send.

Self-check

Ask yourself:

Did the summary match the text, or add things that weren't there? Catching that is the whole point: a chatbot can hallucinate, stating an invented detail with total confidence. On the Fernway notes, the easiest thing for it to miss is that two actions had no owner.
Did refining actually improve it? It almost always does. If you stopped at the first draft, go back and nudge once more to feel the difference.
Did you keep private details out? On a free, personal account, that's the habit to lock in from day one; nothing confidential goes in.

Take it further

Common mistakes

Pasting in private information. On a free personal account, keep names, addresses and account numbers out. Swap in fake ones to practise.
Accepting the first draft. The whole point is the refining. One-and-done misses the most useful habit.
Skipping the check against the source. Copilot can drop or invent points; the unassigned Fernway actions are a perfect example. A quick compare is what keeps you safe.
Trusting the summary because it reads confidently. A fluent, well-organised summary can still be wrong or incomplete. Confidence on the page is not evidence of accuracy. The compare against the original is the only real check, so never skip it because the answer "looks right".

Keeping current

The free chat's look and extras change often, but the loop (summarise, draft, refine, check) is durable and works in every version of Copilot. Microsoft's Copilot help and learning hub is the place to see what the free chat can do today. Accurate as of 13 July 2026.