UiPath Adds Data Fabric Context and Previews Advanced Agent Harness
Agents can query current enterprise records, while a separate preview harness moves long tasks into file-backed, delegated runs with notable limits.
Edited by Tyronne Panaino
UiPath's September 22 Agents update made Data Fabric entities generally available as agent context and introduced an Advanced Agents harness in preview. The paired changes affect teams building enterprise agents in Automation Cloud: one changes how agents reach current business records, while the other changes how longer, multi-step work is executed.
The practical distinction matters. Data Fabric context is a generally available data-access option, whereas the advanced harness remains a preview with platform and governance limits. UiPath's September release notes establish both labels and the release date, so buyers should not treat the two capabilities as having the same maturity.
Data Fabric becomes a direct context source
UiPath's context documentation says agents can use Data Fabric entities directly instead of relying only on indexed knowledge. The agent can query a system of record and reason over current values without a team first creating and maintaining a separate index. UiPath supports both Native entities, whose records are stored in UiPath, and Federated entities, which read from an external system or another Native entity when queried.
A builder can select up to five entities for an agent. Federated entities may also require connector parameters before the agent can read the external system. Those implementation details make the feature more concrete than a generic promise of enterprise grounding: teams must choose the relevant entity set and provide whatever connection inputs its source system requires.
The release notes say natural-language queries continue to follow existing enterprise access rules and permissions. That is an important stated control for agents reaching operational records, but the fetched material does not provide an independent permissions test, a security assessment or evidence covering every connector. Administrators should verify folder visibility, connector credentials and the records exposed to each deployed agent in their own tenant.
A separate harness targets longer agent runs
The Advanced Agents guide draws a structural line between the existing standard harness and the preview option. The standard harness uses a reason-and-act loop, keeps work in one context window and is positioned for shorter tasks that finish in a handful of tool calls.
The advanced harness is designed for longer work. It stores intermediate material in a per-run file workspace, can delegate slices of work to built-in sub-agents, calls tools programmatically from JavaScript and compacts context as a run grows. UiPath presents research, analysis and document-heavy workflows as typical cases, particularly when intermediate files matter or the job spans many tool calls.
That design could reduce pressure on a single prompt and preserve working artifacts during a run. It also changes the operational shape of an agent: delegation, repeated tool use and context compaction introduce more moving parts than the standard loop. UiPath says advanced runs can make more model calls than comparable standard runs, even though consumption during the public preview is priced at half the standard per-call rate. A discount on individual calls therefore does not by itself establish a lower total run cost.
Preview limits narrow the immediate use case
Advanced Agents is available only in Automation Cloud during the preview and is not available in Automation Suite. Guardrails are not supported, Static and Argument values cannot be configured for tool parameters, custom sub-agents cannot be defined, and an advanced agent cannot be cloned as a coded agent. UiPath also warns that moving an existing agent to the advanced harness permanently removes configured Static and Argument tool values and per-model settings; switching back does not restore them.
Those constraints make migration a design decision rather than a harmless toggle. Teams with governance policies that require guardrails, fixed tool arguments or self-managed deployment cannot assume parity with the standard harness. A trial should use a separate agent definition, narrow permissions and representative documents before any production workflow is moved.
What the release establishes
The update establishes two real product deltas: a generally available path from agents to current Data Fabric records and an Automation Cloud preview for file-backed, delegated execution. It does not establish that the advanced harness is faster, cheaper per completed task, more reliable or safer than the standard option. The fetched evidence is entirely UiPath-controlled documentation and includes no independent benchmark or field evaluation.
The next useful checkpoints are general availability for the advanced harness, support for guardrails and configurable tool arguments, custom sub-agent controls, Automation Suite availability, and measured evidence comparing task completion, cost and failure rates between the two harnesses. Until then, the Data Fabric addition is the mature access change; the advanced harness is the more consequential but less settled execution change.
Status
Confirmed. UiPath's official release notes and product documentation establish the September 22 availability labels, supported data-context path, preview architecture and current restrictions. Internal confidence is medium because no independent performance, reliability, security or cost evaluation was fetched.
Sources
- UiPath — Agents release notes for September 2026
- UiPath — Agent contexts
- UiPath — Advanced Agents preview
Update note: Last reviewed 2026-09-29. We will revise this post when UiPath changes the preview limits or publishes independent operational evidence.
Sources
- UiPath — Agents release notes for September 2026 — official
- UiPath — Agent contexts — official
- UiPath — Advanced Agents preview — official
Drafted with AI assistance from source briefs; reviewed for citation completeness and label accuracy.