A Dot is ChatGPT that keeps working after you stop talking.

A note on sourcing

Everything below comes from OpenAI's own material, read on 2 October 2026: the announcement of 29 September, the help centre articles on Dots, the Dots guide in OpenAI's product documentation, and the ChatGPT release notes. If you arrived from the r/ChatGPT thread "I don't really understand dots", most of the answers are in those documents. They are just spread across a lot of pages.

OpenAI writes the name in lower case ("your dot"). We capitalise it so it reads as a name, and leave OpenAI's quotes as they are.

A few areas are thin, and we say so where they come up: texting, which the announcement called coming soon and the help centre now describes as a limited US beta; Microsoft Teams, which OpenAI's admin guide calls an invite-only alpha; usage after the first month, for which OpenAI has not yet published terms; and whether a Dot can use an MCP server you add yourself, which OpenAI does not address. We have not used a Dot ourselves. On a Plus account on 2 October 2026, chatgpt.com/dots said: "Dots require a Pro plan. Upgrade to Pro 100 to be eligible as access rolls out."

What a Dot is

OpenAI describes a Dot as "an always-on agent that keeps work moving across your tools and projects." The difference from an ordinary ChatGPT conversation is that you hand it a responsibility rather than a question. It tracks progress, works out what needs to happen next, decides when to pause and wake up again, and comes back with results or with a decision it needs from you. You can keep talking to it while it works.

Each Dot runs on GPT-6 Astra and lives in the cloud with its own computer and browser, so it carries on when your computer is off. It can split a job across background agents that run in parallel, start separate cloud threads you can open and steer, and hand parts of a request to ChatGPT Work or Codex. It remembers through relevant ChatGPT memory plus its own notes about your preferences, decisions and ongoing work, and those notes follow it from one channel to the next.

At launch you get one Dot. You can name it and change its shape, colour, eyes, glasses and accessories, and its handle follows the name: it starts as @yourname-dot. OpenAI says you will be able to add more Dots later. Separately, it is piloting "specialist dots" for organisations, each with its own identity and access to company systems, and working with Microsoft to bring them under the governance controls in Agent 365.

What it can reach

Three things decide what a Dot can touch:

• The plugins you have connected. OpenAI says Dots can connect to "over 4,000 apps" through its plugin ecosystem. A Dot uses the supported plugins installed and enabled on your account, with the same connections and permissions as ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex. Your existing app permissions apply, so you can let it read email without letting it send email. Connecting a messaging channel such as Slack does not connect your inbox or anything else.
• Its own browser. The Dot's cloud browser keeps its own sessions and does not inherit the logins in your browser. When a site needs a login, the Dot sends you a private sign-in form, and the credentials go to the browser without passing through the model. You can also take over its browser and do a step yourself. Some sites block cloud browsers or ask for extra verification.
• Your computer, if you allow it. You can connect one personal computer so the Dot can use its files, code and apps. Access is off until you grant it, and the computer has to stay online with the ChatGPT app open while the Dot uses it.

It can also run cloud coding tasks in a Codex cloud environment you have already set up, and in ChatGPT Space, OpenAI's new home for pages and files, you can mention it in a page with @dot to draft or revise that page. What it will not do on its own is change a password or move money: OpenAI's rules hand those steps back to you. Permanently deleting data, or installing software from an unrecognised source, needs your confirmation each time.

Where it talks to you

The same Dot is reachable in several places, and switching between them does not start a new Dot or reset its memory. Each channel keeps its own messages, but the Dot uses context across them, and it checks with you before repeating something from a private conversation to other people.

• ChatGPT. You create a Dot in the ChatGPT desktop app or in ChatGPT in a desktop browser, then use it in the mobile app once the supporting update reaches you. You cannot create one on mobile, and mobile web is not supported.
• Voice calls. Select the phone button in the Dot's conversation to talk something through. Ending the call does not stop work you assigned. The Dot cannot call you at launch.
• Slack. Send it a direct message, or mention it in a channel you added it to. By default it answers only you, and other people's messages do not start work. Adding it to a channel does not make it watch that channel until you tell it what to watch for.
• Microsoft Teams. Named in the announcement, but OpenAI's admin guide says Teams access is "limited to an invite-only alpha".
• Texting. The announcement said texting was coming soon. OpenAI's help centre, read on 2 October 2026, describes a limited beta through a third-party provider for some Pro users in the US, not available in Business or Enterprise workspaces.

You can also tell it where different kinds of update should go: routine progress in ChatGPT, say, and decisions in Slack.

Dots, Chat, Work, Codex, tasks and plugins

Much of the confusion comes from ChatGPT now having several things that sound alike. In OpenAI's own terms:

• Chat is for fast, conversational help: you ask and it answers.
• Work is an agent for longer, multi-step jobs that end in a deliverable: a document, spreadsheet, presentation, report or Site. Codex is the same idea for software. Each job is a task that someone starts.
• Scheduled tasks run a request once, on a schedule, or when a supported app event happens, such as a new email or a Slack message. Free accounts can keep up to three active, and tasks triggered by app events need Plus or above.
• Plugins are not agents. They are the connections, bundles of skills and MCP servers, that ChatGPT, Work, Codex and Dots all use to reach other apps.
• A Dot sits above these. It holds an ongoing responsibility rather than a single task, decides for itself when to follow up, can use schedules when timing matters, delegates pieces to Work or Codex, and reports back in whichever channel you chose.

One practical consequence: talking to your Dot does not count toward your ChatGPT usage limits, but the Work and Codex tasks it starts count toward those products' limits, as usual.

Plans and pricing

Dots are rolling out gradually, and OpenAI says access can take several days to reach an eligible account. You have to be 18 or over.

• Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500 ($100, $200 and $500 a month): eligible outside the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland.
• Business Premium seats ($100 per user a month billed annually, or $125 billed monthly): rolling out in all supported ChatGPT regions, the UK and the EU included.
• Enterprise, including Edu and Healthcare: a beta that stays off until a workspace administrator turns it on.

Plans not on that list, including Plus and standard Business seats, do not include Dots at launch.

Your first Dot is included in an eligible plan at no extra cost. You will see the first month described as "unlimited". OpenAI's wording is narrower: the announcement says your plan includes an allowance for deeper work, with extended limits for the first month after launch, and the release notes of 29 September 2026 say dots usage won't count toward eligible plan allowances for a month from that date, with usage terms for each plan to follow. OpenAI also says you will later be able to add more Dots, and scale one by making it faster or giving it more work each month. No prices for either have been published.

Limits at launch

• One Dot per person. More are planned but not dated.
• Setup needs the desktop app or a desktop browser, and mobile web is not supported.
• It cannot call you. The help centre also says you cannot give it a standalone email address of its own at launch, though you can connect your personal email for it to use.
• Texting and Teams are limited, as above.
• You cannot view, edit or delete individual Dot memories. Deleting the Dot is how you clear its context, and disconnecting an app does not delete what the Dot already learned from it.
• Only one personal computer can be connected at a time.
• In Enterprise workspaces, Dots do not support data or inference residency, and enterprise model controls do not apply to them.
• It makes mistakes. Stopping a task does not undo actions already taken, and deleting a Dot does not recall messages it already sent.

On the safety side, every Dot starts with built-in rules for when to act alone and when to ask. A separate check called auto-review looks at actions that could affect your accounts or share information before they run. Custom rules let you decide, for a kind of action, whether the Dot takes it without asking, takes it when you say so, asks before taking it, or hands it to you. The background reading it does to suggest things, which OpenAI calls proactive research, uses read-only tools that cannot send messages or change anything.

When a Dot makes something for someone else

OpenAI's own examples of Dot work are full of things meant for other people: a sales proposal kept current as the terms change, revised launch materials, a findings summary, a fix prepared for review. Files a Dot creates stay where it saved them, such as ChatGPT Library, your computer or a connected storage service.

Before a Dot sends anything on, expect it to check with you. OpenAI says that to send a message or share a file, a Dot seeks authorisation that covers the information and the type of recipient, and more sensitive information needs a more specific recipient.

Getting the work to its reader is a separate question, and the channels a Dot talks in were built for messages. ChatGPT's own sharing is built around people who use ChatGPT: collaborators on a Space page each work "with their own ChatGPT", and someone outside your workspace who is invited to a ChatGPT Site signs in with the account you granted access to. That suits a colleague. It suits a client who has never opened ChatGPT less well.

For that case the usual answer is a page on a private link that opens in any browser. That is what we build at Stacktree, so read this paragraph as us describing where we fit. Our ChatGPT app has been submitted to OpenAI and is in review, so it is not yet a plugin a Dot can use, and we have not tested a Dot with Stacktree because access is rolling out to Pro accounts first. What we know so far about getting a Dot's work onto a private link is on its own page, and we will update both pages once we have run the test.