OpenAI launched an Apps SDK on Monday (see here). This effectively means that developers can now build apps inside ChatGPT:
This was an obvious play by OpenAI and it was only a matter of time until more dynamic experiences made it into chat. After all its very difficult to do some of the most profitable internet activities (ie ecommerece, gaming etc) with text only. The writing was on the wall here ever since MCP-UI came out and Shopify started incorporating it earlier this year:
There are some really cool technical details in how this all works. We heavily invested in MCP-UI, an extension of the MCP protocol to allow exposing widgets that a host can choose to display. The product cards you see in the video are exposed through MCP-UI and then securely… pic.twitter.com/FNsrMiB1Uq
— tobi lutke (@tobi) August 5, 2025
Adding apps within the chat experience does 2 things:
1. it provides users with a much more seamless and cohesive "browsing" experience
2. it helps preserve significant information about the user within ChatGPT
It wasn't too long ago that ChatGPT gained the ability to reference other conversations you've had with it in the past. That particular feature is now commonly referred to as memory - and memory, just like browser cookies before it, is a huge deal. As users accumulate more and more metadata from the external apps, they have better experiences moving forward. ChatGPT will remember the hotel that you like to stay in, the type of food that you like to order and the type books you like to read before bed.
As capabilities across all chat apps are converging more and more, it is
essential to have a piece that makes it incredibly difficult for users
to migrate from one app to the other. Memory allows OpenAI to own a very crucial piece of the consumer
internet. Up until recently, the only way to get access to this type of
information was the browser and your device.
The timing here is perhaps notable. There is no real advantage in being a first mover here. As the MCP-UI experience shows, there are a lot of hard problems to figure out and there is a big chance that some of this blows up in OpenAI's face. Google can add this to Gemini within a quarter and the reality is that its a question of when not if. Launching early doesn't necessarily trigger any network effects either. Perhaps one of the most obvious reasons to get going here is that OpenAI's devices efforts are very real and the sooner they can stand up an ecosystem, the sooner they can have a standalone device that allows their users to do all the activities they do on a phone today.
There are more platform plays coming to ChatGPT, most notably Sam Altman brought up "Sign In With ChatGPT" in May:
All of this reinforces the same idea: AI chat apps are the new platform and the next land-grab will be over the user's activity in all other apps, especially ones that involve purchasing decisions.another gem:
— Cezar (@n1babc) July 20, 2025
Sam mentions federated auth a bunch of times. "Sign in with ChatGPT" is going to be a big step change in defining OpenAI as a platform. Mainly because that is how OpenAI is going to get context on users from outside apps
See full video here:… pic.twitter.com/9uXjTPUYQv