OpenAI brings interactive apps inside ChatGPT

OpenAI's previous attempt at an app ecosystem, the GPT Store, ended up feeling like an isolated side street that most people rarely visited. Now, OpenAI is changing its playbook entirely: instead of making you browse an app store, the apps are coming straight to your chat stream.

At DevDay 2025, OpenAI introduced apps inside ChatGPT alongside an open-source preview of its new Apps SDK. The feature launched immediately for logged-in users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK, with access expanding to Business, Enterprise, and Edu tiers shortly after.

The initial rollout includes seven major launch partners: Spotify, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Booking.com, Expedia, and Zillow. Another 11 partners, including DoorDash, Instacart, Uber, and AllTrails, are slated to join later this year.

Dynamic software right inside your prompt

The fundamental difference with this new generation of apps is how naturally they surface. You can invoke them directly by name, asking Figma to turn a sketch into a diagram, or asking Coursera to explain machine learning concepts. Alternatively, ChatGPT can suggest them based on what you are talking about.

If you are chatting about moving to a new neighborhood, for example, ChatGPT can pull up Zillow right inside the chat window, rendering an interactive map with available listings matching your budget. You can browse the map and ask the AI follow-up questions about specific properties without jumping between browser tabs.

These apps are not static text responses. They bring full UI components directly into the conversation. Canva can generate and preview slide decks, Coursera can pin video lectures to the top of your screen as you take notes, and existing subscribers can log into their third-party accounts directly inside ChatGPT to unlock premium features.

Under the hood, OpenAI built the Apps SDK on top of the Model Context Protocol, the open standard originally created by Anthropic for connecting external tools to AI. OpenAI has open-sourced the SDK, enabling developers to build both the custom interface and backend logic once and potentially deploy them across any MCP-compatible environment. OpenAI also confirmed upcoming support for the Agentic Commerce Protocol to enable in-chat checkout.

Why it matters

For users and creators, this shifts ChatGPT from a conversational search engine into an actionable operating canvas. You no longer need to copy context back and forth between five browser tabs to plan a trip or design a pitch deck. For developers, getting your product inside ChatGPT offers direct distribution to an audience of over 800 million users right at the exact moment your tool is needed.

Strategically, adopting Anthropic's open MCP standard is a remarkably smart move. Instead of fighting a siloed format war, OpenAI recognized that developer buy-in requires portability. By backing an open standard, they make it trivial for existing software backends to plug in.

However, massive questions remain around privacy and platform neutrality. As TechCrunch pointed out, OpenAI requires developers to collect minimal data, but it remains unclear whether partners see your entire conversation history or just the specific prompt that triggered the app. Even thornier is the question of algorithmic bias: when competing services like DoorDash and Instacart are both available, how will ChatGPT decide which one to recommend? We think testing the Apps SDK is a no-brainer for developers right now to claim early real estate, but users should stay mindful of what personal context gets shared with third-party tools.