ChatGPT plugins

ChatGPT plugins were third-party tools, launched by OpenAI in alpha on March 23, 2023, that let ChatGPT call external APIs to fetch up-to-date information, run computations, and use third-party services such as Expedia, Instacart, and Wolfram. OpenAI described them as "tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle" that "help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services."^[1] Each plugin was defined by a JSON manifest at /.well-known/ai-plugin.json plus an OpenAPI specification of its endpoints, an open format that ChatGPT turned into a callable tool. The feature never left beta: OpenAI announced in February 2024 that it was winding down the plugins beta because "GPTs offer a better way" to reach ChatGPT users, blocked new plugin conversations on March 19, 2024, and shut down all remaining plugin chats on April 9, 2024, by which point more than 1,000 plugins had been published.^[1][2] Plugins were the first of three successive extensibility layers OpenAI added to ChatGPT; their successors were the "GPTs" framework (November 2023) and "apps in ChatGPT" (October 2025). In July 2026 OpenAI reused the name for a different product: a Plugin Directory of bundles that combine skills, connected apps, and app templates, which also became the migration path for custom GPTs.^[30][31][33]

ChatGPT plugins, GPTs, and the GPT Store are three successive extensibility layers that OpenAI bolted onto ChatGPT between 2023 and 2024 to let the chatbot reach external data, run code, and host third-party experiences. The plugin system launched in alpha on March 23, 2023, allowed GPT-4 to call APIs described by an OpenAPI specification, and was wound down on April 9, 2024.^[1][2] Its successor, the "GPTs" framework (also called custom GPTs), was unveiled at OpenAI's first DevDay on November 6, 2023; GPTs are user-configurable variants of ChatGPT defined by natural-language instructions, uploaded knowledge files, and optional "actions" that call external APIs.^[3][4] The GPT Store, a marketplace for sharing public GPTs, opened on January 10, 2024 with categories spanning writing, productivity, education, and DALL-E imagery.^[5][6] In October 2025 OpenAI replaced the GPTs-and-actions model again with "apps in ChatGPT" and the Apps SDK, a framework built on the open Model Context Protocol that lets developers ship full interactive interfaces inside the chat.^[16][17] This article is the shared entry for the slugs chatgpt_plugin, chatgpt_plugins, and chatgpt_store; deeper background on the underlying chatbot is at ChatGPT, while sibling marketplace and listing pages live at GPT Store and custom GPTs.

What were ChatGPT plugins?

ChatGPT plugins were an extensibility system that connected ChatGPT to external services for the roughly twelve months between March 2023 and April 2024. A plugin let the model do three things it could not do from its weights alone: retrieve current information from the web or a service, run computations, and take actions through a third party's API.^[1] The headline facts:

The most common confusion is between the plugin store and the GPT Store: the plugin store was a flat list of third-party plugins toggled per conversation, while the GPT Store is a marketplace of complete, configurable chatbots. The 2023 plugins are no longer available. Their direct technical successor was GPT actions, which kept the OpenAPI-based pattern plugins introduced, while apps in ChatGPT replaced that pattern with the Model Context Protocol.^[11][16] The "plugins" that ChatGPT has listed since July 2026 are a separate product, described in the section on plugins in 2026 below.^[30][31]

ChatGPT plugins (2023)

OpenAI announced ChatGPT plugins on March 23, 2023, describing them as "tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle" that help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, and use third-party services.^[1] Access opened in alpha to selected developers and to ChatGPT Plus subscribers on a waitlist, with priority given to a small initial cohort before any wider or API-based rollout.^[1][7] The feature graduated from a closed alpha to an opt-in beta for all Plus subscribers around May 12, 2023, when the plugin store contained roughly 70 third-party plugins and a user could enable the browsing and plugin betas from the settings panel.^[7][18]

Two plugins were hosted by OpenAI itself. The first was a web-browsing plugin built on the Bing search API; it let ChatGPT retrieve content from the open web during a conversation and cite the URLs it had consulted, extending the model past its September 2021 training cutoff.^[7] The second was a sandboxed Python "code interpreter" that gave the chatbot disk space for file uploads and downloads and could run scripts for data analysis, plotting, and format conversion.^[1][7] OpenAI quietly renamed Code Interpreter to "Advanced Data Analysis" in late August 2023, alongside the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, although the underlying capability was unchanged.^[19] OpenAI also open-sourced a "retrieval" plugin that any developer could self-host to index private files, emails, and documentation for semantic search; the repository shipped connectors for several vector databases, including Pinecone, Weaviate, and others, and is a common reference implementation of retrieval-augmented generation.^[1][20]

The third-party plugin set went live with launch partners including Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, OpenTable, Slack, Wolfram, Shopify, and Zapier.^[1][7] Each partner published a JSON manifest at the path /.well-known/ai-plugin.json together with an OpenAPI specification of its endpoints; ChatGPT consumed those files at install time, converted the API surface into a tool description, and decided when to invoke specific endpoints based on the user's prompt.^[8] By the time of the deprecation announcement, more than 1,000 plugins had been published.^[2]

How did a ChatGPT plugin work?

A plugin was, in practice, three things glued together: an existing web service exposed as a REST API, a manifest file, and an OpenAPI schema describing that API.^[8][21] When a user installed a plugin for a domain such as example.com, ChatGPT fetched the manifest from https://example.com/.well-known/ai-plugin.json. The manifest declared metadata and, crucially, two model-facing fields. name_for_model set the namespace ChatGPT used to refer to the plugin internally, and description_for_model acted as a short prompt that told the model what the plugin was for and when to call it.^[21] OpenAI supported only one manifest schema version (v1) and only OpenAPI as the specification format. At runtime, ChatGPT combined the manifest and the schema into a synthetic tool description, inserted it into the model's context, and let the model emit calls to the documented endpoints, then fed the responses back into the conversation.^[8][21]

The table below summarizes the components a developer had to ship.

This pattern made the plugin format unusually portable. Because it relied on the open OpenAPI standard rather than a bespoke OpenAI interface, the same manifest-and-schema approach was reused almost verbatim when OpenAI introduced GPT actions, which is one reason the migration path from plugins to GPTs was mostly a packaging change for developers.^[11][21]

When were ChatGPT plugins discontinued?

Plugin support never escaped beta. OpenAI announced in February 2024 that it would wind down the plugins beta, telling users that GPTs were a better way to reach ChatGPT.^[2][9] Under the published schedule, users could no longer install new plugins or open new conversations that used a plugin after March 19, 2024, and existing plugin conversations stopped working on April 9, 2024.^[2][9] OpenAI directed plugin users to the GPT Store and pointed plugin builders at the GPT "actions" system that had subsumed the manifest and OpenAPI pattern. Third-party providers followed suit: Zapier, for example, published its own notice sunsetting the Zapier ChatGPT plugin and steering users toward its GPT integration.^[2][9]

What are GPTs (custom GPTs)?

GPTs were announced by Sam Altman during the opening keynote of OpenAI's first developer conference, DevDay, on November 6, 2023.^[3][4] OpenAI described them as "tailored versions of ChatGPT" that "combine instructions, extra knowledge, and any combination of skills" so anyone, including users without coding experience, could build a domain-specific assistant.^[3][4]

A GPT is defined by a handful of editable elements.^[3][4][10] Instructions are a free-form natural-language prompt that sets the assistant's persona, tone, and behavior. Knowledge is a set of files (originally up to 20 per GPT, with size limits per file) that the GPT can retrieve from at inference time, covering common document, spreadsheet, image, text, and code formats.^[10] Conversation starters are suggested opening prompts shown to first-time users. Capabilities can be toggled on or off, including web browsing, the DALL-E image generator, and Python data analysis (Code Interpreter). Actions, the most powerful element, let a GPT call external REST APIs via an OpenAPI schema, replacing the function performed by the older plugin manifest.^[10][11]

OpenAI's GPT Builder, a conversational tool inside ChatGPT, asks the creator what they want the GPT to do and drafts the instructions, name, and icon automatically; creators can then switch to a "configure" view to edit fields directly.^[10] By default a GPT is private to its author, but the author can share a link with collaborators, publish it within an Enterprise or Team workspace, or list it publicly in the GPT Store.^[4][5] The initial release of GPTs ran on GPT-4 Turbo, the 128,000-token-context model that OpenAI also introduced at DevDay; later iterations were powered by GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and GPT-5 as those models shipped.^[4]

OpenAI reported that users created more than three million GPTs in the two months after the feature opened to subscribers, although only a small fraction were ever submitted to the public store.^[5][12]

Actions: the successor to plugins

Actions are the part of a GPT that connects it to the outside world, and they are the direct technical heir of the plugin manifest. A builder defines an action by supplying an OpenAPI schema (in JSON or YAML) describing one or more API endpoints, then choosing an authentication scheme in the GPT editor: none, an API key, or OAuth.^[11][22] When the action needs OAuth, the editor collects the client ID, client secret, authorization URL, token URL, and scopes, and ChatGPT manages the token exchange so the GPT can call the API on the signed-in user's behalf.^[22] The differences from plugins are mostly about ownership and packaging rather than mechanism.

Because the schema format barely changed, many plugin developers migrated by lifting their existing OpenAPI specification into a GPT action and writing a short set of instructions around it.^[11][21]

GPT Store

The GPT Store opened on January 10, 2024, two months after the GPTs framework was announced and a few weeks later than the late-November target Altman had floated on stage.^[5][6] It is reached through a dedicated tab inside ChatGPT on the web. At launch it required a paid subscription: ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team (launched the same day), or ChatGPT Enterprise.^[5][6] On May 13, 2024, alongside the GPT-4o launch, OpenAI began extending the ability to discover and use GPTs and the GPT Store to ChatGPT Free users.^[38] At launch OpenAI said users had already created more than three million GPTs since November.^[5][12]

The store organizes public GPTs into curated categories such as Writing, Productivity, Research and Analysis, Programming, Education, Lifestyle, and DALL-E, alongside a "trending" leaderboard and editorial "top picks."^[5][6] Launch-day featured GPTs included a trail recommender from AllTrails, a code tutor from Khan Academy, a content designer from Canva, and an academic search GPT from Consensus.^[5][6] To list a GPT publicly, a builder must verify their profile and pass a mixed human-and-automated review against OpenAI's usage policies.^[5][6]

A revenue-sharing program for builders was announced alongside the store and entered a pilot in the first quarter of 2024, initially restricted to a small group of U.S.-based builders whose GPTs had attracted significant engagement. Payouts were tied to "user engagement" with their GPTs rather than per-call usage or subscriptions, although OpenAI signaled that subscription-based GPTs might follow.^[5][13] The program stayed narrow: builders generally had to be U.S.-based, verified, and clearing a sustained activity bar (reported around 25 conversations per week) to qualify for any payout, and most public GPTs earned nothing.^[13][23] By February 2024, third-party trackers were observing roughly 1,500 new public GPTs added to the store per day, and by mid-2024 the public catalog had grown to around 159,000 listings out of roughly three million total GPTs created by users.^[12]

Reception and limitations

Plugins drew heavy press attention at launch, often framed as ChatGPT getting "eyes and ears" or its own app store. In practice usage stayed concentrated among power users, and OpenAI later said adoption never reached the scale it expected for a feature available to every Plus subscriber, which it gave as a reason for the pivot to GPTs.^[2] Common complaints during the beta were practical: a user could enable only a few plugins at once, the model did not always pick the right plugin, and many integrations were thin wrappers that were slow or unreliable.^[7][8]

GPTs broadened who could build an assistant, but they inherited and added limitations of their own. A GPT is bound to OpenAI's models and to ChatGPT as a host, so a public GPT is not a durable, portable product the way a standalone app would be. Builders also discovered that anything uploaded to a public GPT, including knowledge files and the system instructions, was effectively exposed to determined users. Researchers at Northwestern University tested more than 200 user-designed GPTs and reported a 97.2 percent success rate at extracting the hidden system prompt and a 100 percent success rate at exfiltrating uploaded knowledge files using ordinary prompt-injection techniques.^[24][25] OpenAI added settings to limit, for instance, whether a GPT's code or files could be downloaded, but the underlying problem (that instructions and retrieved content share one text channel with the user) is structural, not a single bug.^[24]

Security and privacy considerations

Tool use turns a chatbot into something closer to an agent, and that raised the stakes for security. The dominant class of risk across plugins, actions, and apps is prompt injection: untrusted text, whether in a fetched web page, an API response, or an uploaded document, can contain instructions that the model follows as if they came from the user. Because plugins and actions can read private data and trigger real operations through authenticated APIs, a successful injection can do more than produce bad text; it can leak credentials or perform unintended actions on a connected service.^[25][26]

Security researchers documented concrete instances. Studies of third-party chatbot plugins deployed on thousands of websites found that many failed to separate trusted from untrusted content or to protect the integrity of conversation history, which let attackers forge context and steer the assistant.^[25] Reviews of ChatGPT plugins also flagged OAuth and account-takeover risks, where flaws in a plugin's authorization flow could expose a user's account on the connected service.^[26] These findings did not stop the rollout, but they shaped how OpenAI staged later releases. The successor app platform runs third-party interface code in a sandboxed iframe and routes data access through reviewed Model Context Protocol servers, and OpenAI gated it behind a review process before opening public submission.^[16][17]

Apps in ChatGPT (2025)

At DevDay on October 6, 2025, OpenAI introduced "apps in ChatGPT" and a preview of the Apps SDK, the next extensibility layer after GPTs and actions.^[16][17] Where a plugin or an action could only call an API and return text, an app can render its own interactive interface inside the conversation: a ChatGPT app is a web component (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, optionally built with a framework such as React) that runs in a sandboxed iframe and appears as an interactive card or panel in the chat thread.^[16][27] The Apps SDK is built on the Model Context Protocol, the open standard Anthropic published in late 2024 for connecting assistants to tools and data, and OpenAI extended MCP so a developer can ship both the app's logic and its user interface from a single MCP server. OpenAI released the SDK as open source so apps could in principle run on any host that adopts the standard.^[16][27]

Launch partners demonstrated on stage included Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow, with examples such as asking Spotify to build a playlist or turning an outline into a Canva deck without leaving the chat.^[16][17] Altman framed the announcement against ChatGPT's reach, saying the product had passed 800 million weekly active users and that roughly four million developers had built with OpenAI.^[17][28] Apps were initially available in preview to ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Edu customers, with the SDK open to developers for building immediately.^[16][27]

On December 17, 2025, OpenAI opened app submissions to all developers and launched an app directory inside ChatGPT, reachable from the tools menu or at chatgpt.com/apps, where users could browse featured apps or search the catalog.^[27][29] Developers submit apps, including their MCP connectivity details and directory metadata, through the OpenAI developer platform and track review status there; approved apps began rolling out gradually in early 2026.^[27][29] On July 9, 2026, OpenAI replaced the app directory with a Plugin Directory; existing app connections were unaffected, and apps became one of the components a plugin can package.^[30][31]

Plugins in ChatGPT (2026)

In 2026 OpenAI brought the word "plugin" back for a different product. The new plugins do not use the 2023 ai-plugin.json manifest; OpenAI's help center describes them as bringing "together the tools, knowledge, and reusable workflows you need to get work done."^[31] The name appeared first in Codex, which gained a curated plugins directory on March 26, 2026 for "installable bundles for reusable Codex workflows" that could package skills, optional app integrations, and MCP server configurations.^[30] On July 9, 2026, the day it introduced ChatGPT Work and a new ChatGPT desktop app, OpenAI replaced the App Directory in ChatGPT with a Plugin Directory. The release notes said "Existing app connections are unaffected" and that plugins "can package skills, apps, and app templates for specific workflows."^[30] Techzine called the unified directory the biggest addition in that launch and listed Google Drive, SharePoint, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Salesforce, GitHub, and Dropbox among the integrations available at the start.^[37]

What a 2026 plugin contains

OpenAI's help center lists four kinds of component a plugin can include.^[31]

The help center separates the two terms this way: "An app connects ChatGPT to an external service, such as Google Drive or Slack, so it can access information or perform supported actions. A plugin packages capabilities into a workflow and can include one or more apps, skills, or both."^[31] Installing a plugin may start an app's sign-in flow, but "installation cannot bypass provider or workspace permissions," and a plugin cannot use an app to reach content outside the permissions granted to that app connection.^[31] As of October 2026, users manage app connections under Settings > Plugins; OpenAI notes that very old versions of the iOS and Android apps may still show Apps instead.^[32]

How the new plugins are built

The developer format is also unrelated to the 2023 one. OpenAI's documentation describes a portable plugin as a folder with a plugin.json manifest at its root that declares the "Agent Plugins" schema, plus, depending on the design, a skills/ directory, an mcp.json file for bundled MCP servers, and optional assets. Older .codex-plugin/plugin.json manifests remain supported as a compatibility fallback.^[34] User interface and authentication belong to the MCP server integration, and the manifest ties that integration to the rest of the package. Where a 2023 plugin described a REST API with an OpenAPI schema, a 2026 plugin reaches outside services through MCP servers, the same foundation as the 2025 Apps SDK.^[16][34]

Public plugins are published once to a directory shared by ChatGPT and Codex. Teams can also distribute plugins through "marketplaces," which are JSON catalogs of plugins kept in a repository or in a user's home directory.^[34] Inside ChatGPT, a Plugin Creator skill, installed from the directory and invoked with @plugin-creator, builds a plugin from a plain-language description. Users with upload permission can upload a plugin as a ZIP file, and workspace administrators can import a marketplace from GitHub and keep its plugins up to date with a daily sync.^[31][34]

Using plugins

Plugins appear in the ChatGPT sidebar on web, desktop, and mobile. The directory is available on every ChatGPT plan, but whether a particular plugin can be installed depends on the plan, workspace, role, region, and the capabilities it includes.^[31] The directory has Public, workspace, Personal, and Installed views. Some listings carry an OpenAI Verified badge, which OpenAI gives to plugins it has reviewed "for quality, reliability, and usefulness"; the help center adds that the badge does not replace an organization's own privacy, security, or vendor review.^[31] ChatGPT uses installed plugins automatically when they are relevant to a request, and a user can also call one directly with an @ mention.^[31]

App permission settings decide when ChatGPT asks before reading information or taking an action. The options may include "Always ask," "Allow read actions," "Allow low-risk actions," and, for an eligible app or account, "Allow all actions"; "Allow low-risk actions" applies when no account, workspace, app, or connection setting overrides it.^[32] In managed workspaces, plugin availability and app access are separate controls. Apps are enabled by default in Business workspaces, and Enterprise role permissions turn "Use plugins" on by default but "Upload plugins" and "Create plugins with MCPs" off by default.^[31]

Timeline of the 2026 plugin platform

All entries are dated from OpenAI's ChatGPT release notes.^[30]

iCloud Mail and Calendar plugins (October 2026)

On October 27, 2026, OpenAI added iCloud Mail and iCloud Calendar plugins. The ChatGPT account on X introduced them as "Much requested," saying users could ask ChatGPT to "find that email, catch up on your inbox, check what's next, or update a calendar event," and that they were "Available on all ChatGPT plans on web, desktop, and iOS."^[35] OpenAI's release notes list the same capabilities: finding emails, catching up on an inbox, checking a schedule, and updating calendar events.^[30]

The help center adds detail. Mail and Calendar are separate plugins, each with read-only contact lookup, and standalone Contacts and Reminders plugins were not part of the launch. Both are rolling out globally to all plans, subject to workspace app controls, and both connect with an Apple app-specific password. The Mail plugin asks for an iCloud Mail address ending in @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com, while the Calendar plugin asks for the primary Apple Account email address, which may be different.^[32] 9to5Mac compared the sign-in to the way third-party mail and calendar apps connect to iCloud, and reported in an update to its story that both plugins also work with ChatGPT's dots agents.^[36]

Retirement of custom GPTs

The 2026 plugins are also the replacement for GPTs. On September 11, 2026, OpenAI said it planned to retire custom GPTs across ChatGPT plans and provide a migration path to plugins.^[30] As of October 29, 2026, its FAQ gives December 11, 2026 as the scheduled retirement date, with February 11, 2027 for FedRAMP workspaces and for workspaces with a qualifying, approved deferral. New GPT creation ended on October 26, 2026 for affected Enterprise workspaces other than FedRAMP workspaces.^[33]

Migration turns a GPT's instructions into a skill, copies its knowledge files into the plugin's reference files, and adds its connected apps to the plugin as apps. The GPT's selected model does not carry over, and the original GPT becomes read-only once migrated.^[33] Custom actions, the OpenAPI-based mechanism that took over from the 2023 plugin manifests, "do not transfer through the migration workflow"; OpenAI says rebuilding such an integration may require a custom MCP server.^[11][33] Existing conversations with custom GPTs remain accessible after retirement, but the GPTs themselves and their GPT pages become inaccessible on the applicable retirement date.^[33]

How did ChatGPT plugins evolve into GPTs and apps?

The progression from plugins to GPTs to apps is as much an architectural story as a product one. Each layer moved control and capability in a consistent direction.

Under the plugin model, third-party services owned the user experience: a developer hosted an ai-plugin.json manifest and an OpenAPI schema, and ChatGPT enabled or disabled the whole plugin per conversation. Discovery happened through a plugin store inside ChatGPT, and a user could load only a handful of plugins at once.^[1][7][8]

Under the GPTs model, the builder owns a complete chatbot persona, with the API connection demoted to one component among several. A GPT bundles instructions, retrieval files, model capabilities, and zero or more actions that wrap an OpenAPI specification almost identical to the plugin format.^[10][11] The user does not enable an API; the user picks a GPT, and the GPT decides when to call out. This change also shifted distribution: instead of a flat list of plugins gated by toggles, the GPT Store is closer to a consumer app marketplace with categories, leaderboards, and a builder revenue pool.^[5][6][13]

Under the apps model, the unit becomes a sandboxed mini-application with its own interface, and the connective tissue is an open protocol rather than an OpenAI-specific manifest. The same architectural arc, moving from vendor-specific plugin manifests toward a model-agnostic protocol for tool use, played out across the industry. Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol in November 2024 as an open JSON-RPC standard for connecting AI assistants to external data sources and tools; OpenAI adopted MCP across its products in March 2025, after which ChatGPT could speak to third-party MCP servers without each integration needing a GPT wrapper, and then built the Apps SDK directly on top of MCP.^[14][15][16]

The 2026 plugins add a fourth step without changing the underlying protocol. The unit of distribution becomes a bundle: skills that carry instructions and workflow guidance, plus the MCP-based apps that reach outside services. That bundle replaces both the app directory and, through migration, the custom GPT.^[31][33][34]

Significance

For all that the plugin beta was short-lived, it was an early, public demonstration of an idea that now underpins the AI agent ecosystem: a large language model does not have to answer from its weights alone; it can be given tools, decide when to use them, and act on the results. The plugin format's reliance on OpenAPI, rather than a closed interface, set an expectation that tool use should be describable in an open, machine-readable way. That lineage runs straight through GPT actions, OpenAI's function calling in the API, the Assistants API, and ultimately the cross-vendor Model Context Protocol. Viewed from 2026, ChatGPT plugins read less like a failed feature than like a first draft of the tool-use and agent platforms that followed.

Continue reading

• ChatGPTChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and built on the company's GPT series of large language models.Mentioned 92 times above
• OpenAIOpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research and deployment organization.Mentioned 56 times above
• GGPT StoreThe GPT Store is a discovery and distribution area within ChatGPT for public Custom GPTs.Mentioned 13 times above
• CCustom GPTA custom GPT, branded by OpenAI as a "GPT", is a version of ChatGPT configured for a particular purpose.Mentioned 9 times above
• Model Context ProtocolModel Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol for exchanging context and invoking capabilities between applications that use large language models and external programs or data sources.Mentioned 6 times above
• OOpenAI Apps SDKThe OpenAI Apps SDK is a developer toolkit, released by OpenAI at OpenAI DevDay on 6 October 2025, that lets third-party software build and run interactive apps directly inside a ChatGPT conversation.Mentioned 6 times above

More from See also

• OpenAI Assistants API
• Function calling
• GPT-4
• GPT-4o
• ChatGPT Work
• ChatGPT desktop app
• Agent Skills

Topics:AI Tools & ProductsChatGPTOpenAI

References

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