30th August 2026
OpenAI announced ChatGPT Work connected July 9th, and person been furiously iterating connected it ever since. It is an extraordinarily confusing and very powerful product. Here’s what I’ve figured retired astir it truthful far.
ChatGPT Work is really 2 products
The much absorbing type of ChatGPT Work is the 1 that runs successful the cloud. This tin beryllium accessed via chatgpt.com aliases done the ChatGPT mobile apps. Let’s telephone it Work Cloud.
If you instal the ChatGPT desktop app—the app that utilized to beryllium called Codex—you summation entree to a point called ChatGPT Work that tin entree files and tally programs straight connected your computer. Let’s telephone that 1 Work Local. This 1 feels much for illustration regular Codex re-skinned to beryllium little intimidating to non-software-developers.
For the remainder of this article I’m going to talk exclusively astir Work Cloud.
Work is for paid subscribers only
Right now, ChatGPT Work (in some flavors) is disposable only to $20/month and up subscribers.users and $8/month Go users do not person access.
Work has features that aren’t disposable successful Chat
The interface for accessing Work is simply a tab selector, which presents it arsenic an replacement to Chat:
The evident mobility is when should I usage Chat, and erstwhile should I usage Work?
OpenAI’s official answer to that mobility is:
Use Chat erstwhile you want an answer, explanation, brainstorm, aliases short draft. Use ChatGPT Work erstwhile you want ChatGPT to complete a task pinch a clear outcome, specified arsenic a brief, deck, analysis, recurring update, workflow, aliases record you tin reappraisal and use.
I find that almost wholly useless, because I’ve been utilizing regular ChatGPT Chat for each of those task categories for years!
The amended mobility past is what features does Work person that are missing from Chat?
After extended experimentation I deliberation I’ve mostly figured that out:
- Options to usage Luna and Terra successful spot of Sol
- A codification execution situation pinch Internet access
- A headless Chrome browser
- A persistent filesystem shared betwixt sessions
- The expertise to people ChatGPT Sites
- The expertise to tally sub-agent sessions pinch Sol, Luna, and Terra
- Scheduled punctual automations (may beryllium successful ChatGPT Chat too)
Model selection
In Work, you get the action to prime GPT-5.6 Sol, Luna, aliases Terra, each pinch Light, Medium, High, Extra High, Max, aliases Ultra reasoning levels. You tin besides prime GPT-5.5 astatine Light, Medium, High, aliases Extra High.
These look to beryllium the aforesaid models that are disposable done the OpenAI API.
Chat offers a different selection: 5.6 Instant, Medium, High, Extra High, and Pro (actually Extra High and Pro are only disposable for $100/month+ subscribers—$20/month subscribers headdress retired astatine High). It doesn’t explicate if those are Luna aliases Terra aliases Sol (I’m assuming Sol?). 5.6 Pro appears to beryllium exclusive to Chat, pinch nary balanced successful Work.
My existent knowing from utilizing Codex is that Ultra is simply a typical mode that much eagerly delegates to sub-agents.
I judge ChatGPT Work sessions are billed against your Codex allowance, while ChatGPT Chat Sessions get their own, abstracted allowance. This whitethorn thief explicate the exemplary readiness differences.
Code execution pinch Internet access!
As a long-time instrumentality of the Code Interpreter pattern—pioneered by OpenAI successful 2023—this is by acold the astir breathtaking characteristic of ChatGPT Work (Cloud) for me.
The codification execution situation tin now talk to the remainder of the internet!
ChatGPT Chat can’t do this—if you inquire it to instal further package packages aliases interact pinch websites aliases APIs that entree will beryllium blocked by the instrumentality proxy.
(Weirdly, backmost successful January it grew the expertise to instal packages, but that doesn’t look to activity immoderate more. I wish they had amended changelogs!)
Claude’s balanced instrumentality has allowed restricted net entree since it launched last September. Claude tin instal packages from PYPI and NPM and clone repositories from GitHub. But that is astir it: the allowlist of domains is very short.
ChatGPT Work allows a full batch much than that. It tin beryllium configured pinch a circumstantial database of allowed domains, but the default appears to beryllium unfastened to all.
This makes Work an incredibly useful tool. You tin person it clone GitHub repositories, instal their dependencies, past usage them to interact pinch the remainder of the web!
A full, headless Chrome browser
Another slayer characteristic of ChatGPT Work is the browser tool. ChatGPT Work tin motorboat a afloat Chrome instance, load websites, capable retired forms, and return screenshots.
If a tract requires motion successful the browser tin punctual you to return complete and participate some passwords and 2FA codes, without round-tripping those credentials done the exemplary itself.
It tin moreover tally JavaScript against the DOM of loaded pages. I prompted:
Load simonwillison.net successful your browser and extract the headings utilizing JavaScript
ChatGPT Work fired up a browser lawsuit and ran the code:
This feels a batch for illustration my shot-scraper javascript tool, only now I tin entree it connected my phone!
ChatGPT Chat gets a caller filesystem for each chat session. These cannot beryllium accessed from immoderate different session.
In ChatGPT Work each convention gets its ain scratch folder—named thing for illustration /workspace/scratch/e00a0a017944—but each of those are persisted crossed sessions, truthful you tin entree files from erstwhile chats. I person 171 folders successful /workspace/scratch correct now!
As acold arsenic I tin show that /workspace measurement is mounted to each Work sessions that are presently running—file edits from 1 tin beryllium instantly seen by the others. They don’t look to stock the aforesaid process abstraction though, and localhost servers moving successful 1 can’t beryllium accessed from another.
ChatGPT Sites
ChatGPT Work has the expertise to build and deploy full websites, utilizing Cloudflare Workers. These tin person HTML and JavaScript and tin tally server-side features too, including stateful features connected apical of Cloudflare D1 and R2.
Here’s a elemental tract I built pinch this feature:
london-pelicans-in-her-piety.simonw.chatgpt.site
My punctual was:
Figure retired each of the places successful London pinch a pelican successful her piety, past move that into a JSON record and build a ChatGPT sites tract astir them
(A pelican successful her piety is simply a fascinating portion of medieval Christian imagery—once you cognize astir them you’ll find them each complete the place.)
These sites default to being backstage to the personification that created them, but you tin make them nationalist and (on squad plans) stock them pinch different circumstantial individuals.
Sub-agents pinch Sol, Luna, and Terra
There’s not overmuch to opportunity astir this one. ChatGPT Chat can’t tally sub-agents. ChatGPT Work can. This is very overmuch a power-user feature: if you are moving a analyzable task that tin use from aggregate parallel agents moving together, Work tin do that.
Scheduled punctual automations
Another characteristic that seems to person migrated from regular ChatGPT to ChatGPT Work astatine immoderate point. You tin punctual ChatGPT Work for illustration this:
run a hunt to spot if Waymo person announced a motorboat day for Half Moon Bay each time astatine 8am
This will schedule a punctual to tally connected that frequency. These prompts tin determine that thing absorbing has happened, aliases they tin determine to notify you of immoderate caller information.
Update: Actually this seems to activity successful ChatGPT Chat arsenic well.
It’s still worthy noting present though, arsenic it tin beryllium utilized successful conjunction pinch different ChatGPT Work exclusive features. You tin group a scheduled task to update a ChatGPT Site connected an hourly basis, for example.
Is this safe?
An unfastened mobility for maine correct now is really safe each of this worldly is.
My lethal trifecta model warns astir the risks inherent successful immoderate supplier strategy that combines entree to backstage information pinch vulnerability to untrusted contented and a measurement to pass stolen accusation backmost to an attacker.
ChatGPT Work combines each three!
I’d emotion to perceive much from OpenAI astir really they protect ChatGPT Work sessions against punctual injection attacks. I expect their reply is the aforesaid auto-review mechanism arsenic Codex.
OpenAI could make this a batch little confusing
Figuring this each retired took measurement much activity than it should have.
I deliberation location are 2 cardinal problems here:
- OpenAI explicate Work successful position of what it’s for, not what it really does
- OpenAI still insist connected hiding their strategy prompts and devices descriptions
If the ChatGPT Work archiving included the nonstop strategy punctual and instrumentality descriptions utilized by the supplier I wouldn’t person needed to constitute this post.
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