OpenAI has turned its coding tools into dots, an always-on personal assistant that keeps working in the background even when you aren't asking it to. The company released dots at its developer day in late September, according to TechCrunch, and it is now available in the ChatGPT desktop and mobile apps for subscribers on the Pro tier or higher, with plans starting at $100 a month.
The launch places OpenAI in direct competition with a wave of always-on assistants, including Meta's Muse and the startup Instinct. Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI's enterprise product team, told TechCrunch Disrupt that the product grew out of the company's agentic coding work, repackaged into something more intuitive for everyday users.
What dots does and how it works
Once connected to your calendar, email, computer and other tools, dots tries to help you get work done without waiting for a prompt. OpenAI says much of the same functionality already exists in its Codex coding app, released earlier this year, but Codex requires more work and hand-holding from the user.
Embiricos described the name as a play on the negative space inside OpenAI's logo, chosen because it could eventually feel ubiquitous. The core idea is a persistent agent that thinks ahead for you. In TechCrunch's testing, that ability is often useful but still imperfect: it flags calendar conflicts and deadlines, sometimes only minutes before they happen.
dots features and privacy questions
Embiricos told Disrupt that dots includes a feature called proactive research. On a cadence, the assistant reviews what it knows about you, what you have discussed and what you have given it access to, then researches how it could be more helpful and proposes that.
That data model raises the same questions that have followed Meta's Muse, which builds profiles of your family and friends. OpenAI says dots has the same privacy controls as ChatGPT itself: users can turn off model training and control which resources the agent can access on their computer.
