OpenAI Is Turning ChatGPT Into an App Store for Your Work

OpenAI used its DevDay event to announce that outside apps can now build their own mini-experiences inside ChatGPT. These add-ons — OpenAI calls them plug-ins — get a dedicated home in the ChatGPT sidebar, and developers can add interactive panels and file viewers, so you can work with a tool while you're still chatting. Think of it less like a search box and more like a phone home screen, except every "app" is a conversation. Previously, these connections were mostly invisible behind-the-scenes links to tools like Slack, SharePoint, Airtable, and Google Drive.

For you, the payoff is fewer tabs and less copy-pasting. Instead of jumping between five windows to pull a number from a spreadsheet into an email, you ask ChatGPT and the tool's panel appears right there. OpenAI is also giving developers a new Plugin Creator tool and a redesigned submission and discovery process, with better ranking of which add-ons get suggested to you. More apps, easier to find — that's the theory, and it's why this matters to anyone who spends their day inside work software.

OpenAI also said it will support a proposed technical standard called MCP Events, which lets add-ons start automations — tasks that run themselves — when something happens in a connected app. A new customer email, for example, could automatically trigger ChatGPT to draft a reply. Separately, ChatGPT Sites, the simple websites people build with ChatGPT, can now host these add-ons, so you can share a tool with colleagues who plug in their own data and permissions.

The honest catch: none of this exists for you until developers actually build it, and every connection you approve is another company holding a key to your information. OpenAI does let you approve each app's access individually, which is the right instinct — but it also means more permission pop-ups to read. And the bigger picture: you're consolidating more of your digital work life into a single company's window.