# Design ChatGPT Plugins

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/design_chatgpt_plugins
> Updated: 2026-06-27
> Categories: AI History, AI Tools & Products, ChatGPT
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

*See also: [ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/chatgpt_plugins), [ChatGPT Plugin Categories](/wiki/chatgpt_plugin_categories) and [Design](/wiki/design)*

**Design ChatGPT Plugins** were third-party extensions inside [ChatGPT](/wiki/chatgpt) that helped the chatbot create graphic assets, page layouts, logos, banners, and full websites without leaving the conversation, with named examples including the Canva, B12 AI Websites, and Show Me Diagrams plugins.[1][4][7][8] They are now deprecated: [OpenAI](/wiki/openai) opened the broader [ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/chatgpt_plugins) beta on March 23, 2023, disabled new plugin installs and conversations on March 19, 2024, and stopped existing plugin conversations on April 9, 2024.[1][2][3] Their use cases were absorbed by native [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e) image generation, [Custom GPTs](/wiki/custom_gpts) in the [GPT Store](/wiki/gpt_store), GPT Actions, and later the [Model Context Protocol](/wiki/model_context_protocol).[11][13][14]

The Design tab covered a different slice of work from the related [Art ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/art_chatgpt_plugins) and [Data Visualization ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/data_visualization_chatgpt_plugins) categories. Design plugins concentrated on production assets that a marketer, freelancer, or small business operator might publish on a website or social feed. The most prominent entry was the Canva plugin, added on September 5, 2023, which was widely covered by design and technology press.[4][5][6]

## What were design ChatGPT plugins?

Design ChatGPT plugins were a category of third-party plugins, inside the broader ChatGPT plugins program, that produced or brokered visual and layout assets from a chat request. In OpenAI's own words, "Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services."[1] In the Design tab that meant calling a graphic design platform, a website builder, an image model, or a diagramming service so that ChatGPT could return templates, a hosted website, an image, or a rendered diagram.

The category sat inside the ChatGPT Plugins program, which OpenAI opened in beta on March 23, 2023, expanded to all ChatGPT Plus subscribers on May 12, 2023, and wound down between March 19, 2024 and April 9, 2024.[1][2][3]

## When were ChatGPT plugins released and deprecated?

OpenAI announced ChatGPT plugins on March 23, 2023, with twelve partner integrations and two first-party plugins for browsing and a code interpreter. None of the original twelve were design-focused, so the Design category began essentially empty and filled in over the following months as third-party developers shipped extensions through the plugin store.[1]

Access opened in alpha to Plus subscribers and waitlisted developers. On May 12, 2023, OpenAI announced that web browsing and plugins would be available to all Plus subscribers the following week, and the plugin store opened broadly on May 19, 2023.[2]

B12, a website builder, announced its AI Websites plugin on June 6, 2023, letting a user describe a business in chat and receive a working professional website with scheduling, payments, and intake functionality after roughly sixty seconds.[7] The Show Me Diagrams plugin appeared on June 20, 2023.[8] Argil AI was added on June 26, 2023 as an image generation plugin that wrapped DALL-E 2.[9]

On September 5, 2023, OpenAI added the Canva plugin, the most prominent design-category integration of the plugin era. Coverage in Decrypt, Dataconomy, KDnuggets, and Tech.co described it as a way to generate logos, banners, social media posts, and presentation templates by describing them in natural language and having ChatGPT call Canva's library.[4][5][6][10]

On October 19, 2023, [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e) 3 was released in beta inside ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise as a built-in feature, removing some of the rationale for image generation plugins.[11]

On November 6, 2023, at the first OpenAI DevDay, the company introduced GPTs, customised versions of ChatGPT with instructions, knowledge files, and Actions. DesignerGPT, a Custom GPT by Pietro Schirano that produced HTML and React websites with images from [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e), launched in mid-November 2023 and became one of the most-cited entries in the early Custom GPT ecosystem.[12]

OpenAI later announced that the plugins beta would end. New installs and conversations were disabled on March 19, 2024, and existing plugin conversations stopped working on April 9, 2024. The [GPT Store](/wiki/gpt_store) had launched on January 10, 2024, by which point users had already created more than 3 million Custom GPTs.[3][13]

| Date | Event |
|------|-------|
| March 23, 2023 | ChatGPT plugins announced; no design-focused launch partners |
| May 12, 2023 | Plugins rolled out broadly to ChatGPT Plus |
| May 19, 2023 | Plugin store opens to all Plus customers |
| June 6, 2023 | B12 AI Websites plugin launches |
| June 20, 2023 | Show Me Diagrams plugin launches |
| June 26, 2023 | Argil AI image generation plugin launches |
| September 5, 2023 | Canva plugin launches |
| October 19, 2023 | DALL-E 3 integrated natively into ChatGPT |
| November 6, 2023 | GPTs unveiled at OpenAI DevDay |
| January 10, 2024 | GPT Store opens (3 million+ Custom GPTs already created) |
| March 19, 2024 | New plugin installs and conversations disabled |
| April 9, 2024 | Existing plugin conversations stopped working |

## How did design plugins work?

Design plugins used the standard plugin architecture: a manifest file and an OpenAPI specification that ChatGPT consumed at install time. When a user typed a request, ChatGPT decided whether to call an installed plugin, sent structured arguments, and folded the result into the reply. In the Design tab, the typical patterns were:

* returning editable templates from a graphic design platform such as the Canva library
* turning a short business description into a complete published website with page structure, copy, and starter images
* generating posters, social media banners, and product mockups by calling an external image model
* drafting wireframe-style flowcharts and information architecture diagrams used as input for a more detailed design pass
* crafting prompts for image models running outside ChatGPT such as [Midjourney](/wiki/midjourney) and [Stable Diffusion](/wiki/stable_diffusion), at the boundary of design and [prompt engineering](/wiki/prompt_engineering)

Users could install up to three plugins simultaneously, which encouraged combinations such as a website builder paired with an image generator.

## What were the notable design plugins?

The plugins below were widely cited as design-category entries during the plugins beta. All claims describe behaviour during that beta period; none of these plugins remain installable through ChatGPT today. This wiki only lists plugins that can be cross-referenced to multiple credible sources. Plugins that appeared in a single roundup without independent confirmation are omitted.

### Canva

The Canva plugin was the largest single design integration of the plugin era. It launched on September 5, 2023 and was promoted heavily by both companies as a way to bring graphic design into the chat. A user typed a request such as a Twitter banner for a coffee shop, ChatGPT called the Canva endpoint, and the response included a list of relevant templates with previews. Clicking a template opened the design in Canva's editor, where the user finished and downloaded the asset.[4][5][6][10]

Coverage emphasised four template families: social media posts for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; logos and brand marks; marketing materials such as posters, flyers, and event banners; and presentation decks. The plugin did not place graphics inside the chat. It returned suggested templates that the user finished in Canva, so reviewers described it as a template discovery layer rather than an in-chat editor. Canva later replaced the original plugin with a Custom GPT and, in 2025, with a Canva integration through OpenAI's Apps in ChatGPT framework.[5][14]

### B12 AI Websites

The B12 AI Websites plugin, announced on June 6, 2023, generated a complete free website from a short chat. After the user described a business, the plugin returned a published site with sample copy, appointment booking links, payment buttons, and an intake form, which the user could refine in the B12 dashboard. It was one of the first design-category entries to ship a finished, hosted artefact rather than a draft the user had to assemble elsewhere.[7]

### Diagrams: Show Me

Diagrams: Show Me, often listed as Show Me Diagrams, was published on June 20, 2023 and supported diagram languages including mermaid, graphviz, plantuml, nomnoml, and d2. Although usually filed under data visualization, designers used it for flow diagrams, sitemaps, and information architecture sketches that fed into wireframes. It was open sourced on GitHub and was one of the few plugins that produced an inline rendered image rather than a redirect to an external editor.[8]

### Argil AI

Argil AI was added on June 26, 2023 as an image generation plugin aimed at users who did not want to write detailed prompts. The company built its own diffusion product elsewhere, but the plugin version called DALL-E because that was a plugin store constraint at the time. In the design tab it was used for poster, banner, and social card concepts.[9]

### MixerBox ImageGen

MixerBox ImageGen, built by the MixerBox plugin family, generated DALL-E 2 images directly and produced optimised prompts for [Midjourney](/wiki/midjourney) and [Stable Diffusion](/wiki/stable_diffusion). Reviewers cited use cases such as art deco logo concepts, retro promotional posters, website hero backgrounds, and social media graphics. It is also discussed in the [Art ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/art_chatgpt_plugins) article because of its hybrid positioning.[15]

### Image Editor

Image Editor performed basic image manipulation inside ChatGPT, including resizing, cropping, blurring, and rotating an uploaded image. It was not a creation tool. Its appeal came from preparing assets for web pages, blogs, and social media without switching to a separate editor.[16]

### Others occasionally listed

Third-party roundups in 2023 sometimes cited Visla for short videos, A+ Doc Maker for branded documents, and various wireframe tools. These appear in the [List of ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/list_of_chatgpt_plugins) directories but lack independent confirmation.

## What did a typical design workflow look like?

The shape of a design conversation depended heavily on which plugin was active. Reviewers and tutorial writers in 2023 settled on a handful of recurring patterns.

* **Template discovery**. With the Canva plugin enabled, a user described an asset, ChatGPT returned templates with thumbnails, the user picked one, and Canva opened in a new tab to finish the design.
* **Website from a brief**. With B12 AI Websites enabled, a user answered a few short prompts and received a published site within about a minute, then refined it inside B12.
* **Logo and poster generation**. With MixerBox ImageGen or Argil AI enabled, a user described an aesthetic, the plugin called DALL-E 2, and the user iterated by adjusting the prompt.
* **Diagram and wireframe sketching**. With Show Me Diagrams enabled, a user described a process or sitemap and the plugin rendered an inline image.

## Why were design plugins deprecated?

The wider plugin programme was deprecated by [OpenAI](/wiki/openai) on March 19, 2024 for new conversations and on April 9, 2024 for existing ones.[3] Several factors weighed especially on the design category.

* **First-party competition**. After [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e) 3 shipped natively in ChatGPT in October 2023, third-party image generation plugins lost much of their reason to exist.[11]
* **Install friction**. Users could only run three plugins per conversation, making it costly to combine a design plugin with a research plugin and a productivity plugin.
* **The three click problem**. Successful design plugins, including Canva, returned templates the user still had to finish in another tab. The model was good at brokering an introduction but not at finishing the asset.
* **The rise of GPTs**. Design-oriented builders moved their effort to Custom GPTs that bundled a system prompt, knowledge files, and Actions into a single shareable artefact. DesignerGPT, which generated complete HTML and React websites, illustrated how much more polished a Custom GPT could be than a single-API-call plugin.[12]
* **Discoverability**. Plugins sat behind a model picker and a per-conversation toggle, and the Design tab was rarely surfaced in OpenAI marketing.

## What replaced design ChatGPT plugins?

Several product categories absorbed the use cases that design plugins had served. The broad succession ran from plugins to Custom GPTs and the GPT Store, then to GPT Actions, and later to the [Model Context Protocol](/wiki/model_context_protocol), an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data.[3][13][14]

### Custom GPTs and the GPT Store

[Custom GPTs](/wiki/custom_gpts) are user-created versions of [ChatGPT](/wiki/chatgpt) that combine instructions, knowledge files, and Actions. The [GPT Store](/wiki/gpt_store) launched on January 10, 2024 with more than 3 million Custom GPTs already created and design-oriented GPTs visible across the writing, productivity, and lifestyle tabs. Plugin developers including Canva, Whimsical, and B12 later shipped Custom GPTs wrapping the same APIs.[13]

### Canva as a successor product

Canva replaced the original plugin first with a Custom GPT and later, in 2025, with a deeper Canva integration through OpenAI's Apps in ChatGPT framework. The successor integration moved beyond template discovery to allow generation, preview, and editing of full Canva designs inside the chat. The shift illustrated how a design partner could iterate from a plugin to a GPT to a first-class App without changing the underlying user need.[14]

### Native DALL-E and image generation

The direct successor to image generation plugins was native [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e) integration. Once DALL-E 3 was available inside Plus and Enterprise from October 2023, users could ask [ChatGPT](/wiki/chatgpt) for a logo, poster, or banner without installing anything.[11]

### Standalone design tools

Users who wanted full design control moved to dedicated tools such as Canva, Figma, and Adobe Express, which added their own AI features through 2024 and 2025. Adobe Express shipped a separate ChatGPT integration via OpenAI's Apps framework in 2025. B12 ported its plugin to a Custom GPT. Whimsical evolved its product into a Whimsical Diagrams GPT for wireframing, mind mapping, and flowcharting in late 2023.

## How do design plugins relate to the art and data visualization categories?

The Design tab was unusually porous. Several plugins commonly described as design belonged elsewhere in the formal taxonomy.

| Plugin | Often called design because | More precise category |
|--------|----------------------------|------------------------|
| Canva | Generates templates, social posts, logos | Design |
| MixerBox ImageGen | Generates posters, logos, banners | Art or Design |
| Argil AI | Generates posters and banners from prompts | Art or Design |
| Show Me Diagrams | Renders flowcharts and sitemaps | Data Visualization |
| B12 AI Websites | Builds full websites | Design or Productivity |
| Image Editor | Crops and resizes images | Photography or Design |

Image generation plugins straddled art and design depending on the use case. Diagram plugins straddled design and data visualization depending on whether the output was a wireframe or a flowchart. The [Art ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/art_chatgpt_plugins) and [Data Visualization ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/data_visualization_chatgpt_plugins) articles cover the same plugins from neighbouring perspectives.

## What is the historical significance of design plugins?

Design plugins are now framed as a short transitional product class. The category peaked between September 2023 and January 2024 with the Canva integration, and was hollowed out from above when [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e) 3 was folded into [ChatGPT](/wiki/chatgpt) and from the side when [Custom GPTs](/wiki/custom_gpts) replaced plugins. Even so, it showed that a [large language model](/wiki/large_language_model) could orchestrate calls to a graphic design platform, a website builder, an image generator, and a diagramming tool from inside one conversation, and it established the chat-to-template workflow that later appeared in Canva, Adobe Express, and other design integrations.

## ELI5: design ChatGPT plugins

Imagine ChatGPT could press buttons in other apps for you. If you asked for a poster, a special add-on (a plugin) would quietly open a design app like Canva, grab some matching templates, and hand them back inside the chat. Design plugins were the add-ons that did art, posters, websites, and diagrams. They worked for about a year. OpenAI turned them off in 2024 and gave people better ways to do the same thing, like asking ChatGPT to draw the picture itself or using Custom GPTs.

## See also

* [ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/chatgpt_plugins)
* [ChatGPT Plugin Categories](/wiki/chatgpt_plugin_categories)
* [Design](/wiki/design)
* [Art ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/art_chatgpt_plugins)
* [Data Visualization ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/data_visualization_chatgpt_plugins)
* [List of ChatGPT Plugins](/wiki/list_of_chatgpt_plugins)
* [Custom GPTs](/wiki/custom_gpts)
* [GPT Store](/wiki/gpt_store)
* [Model Context Protocol](/wiki/model_context_protocol)
* [DALL-E](/wiki/dall-e)
* [Midjourney](/wiki/midjourney)
* [Stable Diffusion](/wiki/stable_diffusion)
* [ChatGPT](/wiki/chatgpt)
* [OpenAI](/wiki/openai)
* [GPT-4](/wiki/gpt-4)
* [Prompt Engineering](/wiki/prompt_engineering)
* [Large Language Model](/wiki/large_language_model)

## References

1. OpenAI. *ChatGPT plugins*. March 23, 2023. https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-plugins/
2. OpenAI. *ChatGPT Release Notes*. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes
3. OpenAI Developer Community. *Plugin Store and New Chats With Plugins, Closed March 19 2024*. https://community.openai.com/t/plugin-store-and-new-chats-with-plugins-closed-march-19-2024/689877
4. Dataconomy. *Canva Plugin has just arrived at ChatGPT and is ready to work*. September 5, 2023. https://dataconomy.com/2023/09/05/how-to-use-canva-chatgpt-plugin/
5. Decrypt. *OpenAI Plugs ChatGPT Into Canva to Sharpen Its Competitive Edge in AI*. https://decrypt.co/154923/chatgpt-canva-plugin-openai-design-tool
6. KDnuggets. *Automate Graphic Design Activity with ChatGPT Canva Plugin*. https://www.kdnuggets.com/automate-graphic-design-activity-with-chatgpt-canva-plugin
7. B12. *Announcing B12's AI Websites plugin for ChatGPT*. June 6, 2023. https://www.b12.io/blog/ai-websites-chatgpt-plugin/
8. ChatGPT Plugin Directory. *Diagrams: Show Me, Create Schemes, Visualizations, and Mind Maps*. https://chatgpt-plugin.org/plugins/diagrams-show-me-create-schemes-visualizations-and-mind-maps/
9. Argil. *Argil: The ChatGPT plugin for Image Generation*. https://www.argil.ai/blog/argil-the-chatgpt-plugin-for-image-generation
10. Tech.co. *How To Install and Use ChatGPT Plugins Like Canva*. https://tech.co/news/install-chatgpt-plugins-canva
11. OpenAI. *DALL-E 3 is now available in ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise*. October 19, 2023. https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3-is-now-available-in-chatgpt-plus-and-enterprise/
12. Pietro Schirano. *DesignerGPT announcement*. November 10, 2023. https://x.com/skirano/status/1723026266608033888
13. OpenAI. *Introducing the GPT Store*. January 10, 2024. https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-gpt-store/
14. Canva Newsroom. *Bringing on-brand design creation to AI workflows: Create with Canva inside ChatGPT*. https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/deep-research-integration-mcp-server/
15. MixerBox. *MixerBox ImageGen for ChatGPT*. https://www.mixerbox.com/chatgpt-plugins/imagegen
16. ROIHacks. *Image Editor ChatGPT Plugin Tutorial, Use Cases & Prompts*. https://roihacks.com/image-editor-chatgpt-plugin/