According to VentureBeat, OpenAI has officially opened submissions for its ChatGPT App Directory to all third-party developers as of December 17, with approved apps set to start rolling out to its over 800 million users beginning in early 2026. The company launched a dedicated App Directory page accessible from the ChatGPT sidebar, explicitly stating it’s not a “store.” Once installed, users can trigger apps in conversation by using the @ symbol or a tools menu. OpenAI will host a public “Build Hour” webinar for developers on January 21 to guide the submission process. All apps must undergo a review to ensure they comply with public guidelines, which currently ban selling digital goods or subscriptions, only allowing links to purchase physical goods.
Not A Store, But A Platform Play
Here’s the thing: this feels like the real, serious follow-up to the hype around the GPT Store that launched way back in early 2024. Remember that? There was all this talk about revenue sharing for creators building custom GPTs, and then… not much. The GPT Store is still there, but it’s largely text-based and hasn’t become the economic engine many hoped for. This App Directory, built on the more powerful Apps SDK, is different. It allows for actual interactive UI elements—buttons, sliders, multi-views, maps. That’s a whole other league of utility. So while they’re avoiding the word “store” for now, probably to manage expectations around monetization, this is clearly OpenAI‘s big move to become a platform. They’re building an ecosystem where ChatGPT is the operating system.
The Data Question Everyone’s Asking
Now, the elephant in the room is data. And OpenAI’s guidelines for developers are strict on paper: apps can’t request full chat transcripts, must minimize data collection, and need clear privacy policies. Users get warned before connecting. But what does OpenAI itself do with the data flowing between you and, say, a Stripe or Gmail app? The company hasn’t clarified if it logs that data, stores it, or could use it for training. That’s a massive unanswered question. For a platform aiming to handle everything from your emails to your payments, that ambiguity is a huge hurdle for trust. They’ve put the onus on developers, but their own role as the pipeline is murky.
What This Actually Changes
For users, the shift is subtle but profound. ChatGPT stops being just a thing you query and becomes a place where you *do* things. Need to edit an image? Pull in the Photoshop app. Build a slide deck? Trigger Canva. Book a trip? Use the Kayak app. It’s all right there, conversational and context-aware. For developers, the lure is obvious: instant, frictionless distribution to a user base of hundreds of millions. No separate download, no install. You’re just a mention away in a chat. As OpenAI’s blog post states, this is “just the beginning.” But the infrastructure is now live. The race to build the must-have ChatGPT app is officially on, and the chatbot era is pivoting hard into the platform era.
