AI Unwrap
Back to Tools

ChatGPT Work

by OpenAI

Generate VideoTry ChatGPT Work
IntermediatePaidIncluded with eligible paid ChatGPT plans (Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, Enterprise); availability varies by plan. Usage is consumption-based and shared with Codex.

An agent that lives inside ChatGPT and takes on whole pieces of work rather than answering one message at a time. You describe the outcome you want — a brief, an analysis, a deck, a spreadsheet, a recurring report — and it gathers what it needs from your connected apps and files, breaks the job into steps, and works away until it has something finished for you to review. You use it from the same ChatGPT interface you already know, switching to Work from the toggle at the top of the page, and you @-mention plugins to point it at particular tools. It can also run tasks on a schedule.

What is ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT Work is a mode inside ChatGPT for jobs that are too big for a single reply. Ordinary chat is a conversation — you ask, it answers, you ask again. Work is different: you hand over an outcome, and it goes away and produces it.

The useful way to think about it is the difference between asking a colleague a question and giving them a brief. You would ask a question when you want a quick answer. You give a brief when you want a finished thing back — a report, a spreadsheet, a set of slides — and you are happy to review it rather than watch every step.

Because it can reach the apps and files you have connected, it does not need you to paste your material in. That is the real shift. If your figures live in a spreadsheet and your notes live in your email, Work can go and read both, rather than waiting for you to copy them across one at a time.

Best Use Cases

Producing a Finished Document

Give it the outcome and the sources, and let it come back with a draft you can review rather than a set of suggestions you then have to assemble yourself.

Try this prompt: "Write a two-page briefing note on how our support response times changed last quarter. Use the ticket export in my connected Drive, and end with three things I should raise with the team."

Work That Spans Several Apps

Most real tasks touch more than one place — a spreadsheet, an inbox, a project tracker. Work can pull from each of them in one go, instead of you acting as the courier between them.

Try this prompt: "Cross-check the deadlines in my project tracker against what I actually promised in email over the last month, and list every one where the two do not match."

Recurring Reports

Anything you produce on a rhythm — a Monday summary, a monthly update — can be set to run on a schedule so it is waiting for you rather than being another thing to remember.

Try this prompt: "Every Monday at 8am, summarise last week's activity in my connected project tracker and flag anything that slipped."

Technical and Analytical Work

The plugin list includes GitHub and the common trackers, which makes Work practical for the reporting side of technical roles rather than just office documents. Point it at a repository and ask what changed since the last release; point it at the tracker and ask which defects keep coming back; hand it an exported dataset and ask for the analysis written up. The work spans the apps you already use, and the output is a document you can send on rather than a chat you have to summarise yourself.

Try this prompt: "Look at the issues closed in my connected repository this sprint, group them by component, and write release notes with a short summary of each fix."

How It Connects To Your Other Tools

This is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes Work different from ordinary chat.

  • Plugins and connected apps — Work connects to the tools teams actually use, including Google Drive, SharePoint, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, Zoom, GitHub, Canva and Dropbox, among others. You @-mention a plugin to point Work at a particular tool.
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP) — the open standard for connecting AI tools to other software. Where a service you use publishes an MCP server, it can be brought in as a connection rather than being something you copy and paste from.
  • Scheduled tasks — set a job to run on a timer, and it runs and reports back without being asked again.
  • Computer use — for things with no direct connection, Work can operate a browser to get the job done.

If you have been copying text out of ChatGPT and into your email or your documents by hand, connecting the apps properly is the single biggest change you can make.

Getting Started

  1. Open ChatGPT on the web, mobile or the desktop app, signed in with an eligible paid plan.
  2. Switch from Chat to Work using the toggle at the top of the page.
  3. Connect the apps you want it to draw on, in settings. Start with wherever your files live.
  4. Describe the outcome you want, not the steps. Say what "finished" looks like.
  5. Let it run — larger jobs take a while — then review what comes back and ask for changes.

Tips for Beginners

  • Ask for an outcome, not an action. "Produce a one-page summary comparing these two suppliers" works far better than "look at these files".
  • Say what good looks like up front — length, tone, who is reading it. It is much cheaper than correcting a finished draft.
  • Connect fewer apps to begin with. Add one, get comfortable with what it can see, then add the next.
  • Use plain chat for quick questions. Work is for jobs with a reviewable output at the end; using it for a one-line answer is slower, not faster.
  • Always read what comes back. It is a first draft produced quickly, not a signed-off document.
  • Check what your plan includes — availability and usage limits differ between plans, and usage is consumption-based.

Get a Video Tutorial

Our AI will generate a professional video script about this or other topics, tailored to your learning path.

Generate a Script