ChatGPT Work: What the Work Mode Does and How to Use It (2026)
ChatGPT Work is OpenAI's agentic work mode, launched on 9 July 2026. It can gather information from your connected apps, create documents, slides, and spreadsheets, run Scheduled Tasks, and keep complex projects moving for hours, all without you staying at your screen. Available on Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans.
What Is ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT Work is a dedicated mode inside ChatGPT designed for multi-step, longer-horizon tasks. Where a standard ChatGPT conversation answers a question and stops, Work can take a goal, "analyse this month's sales data and produce an executive summary", and follow it through to a finished output, checking sources, creating documents, and iterating without your ongoing involvement.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on 9 July 2026 alongside a major update to the ChatGPT desktop app. The same update merged the Codex app into ChatGPT, so the desktop app now has three distinct modes: Chat, Work, and Codex.
More than 5 million people already used Codex every week before the Work launch, and over 1 million of those were using it for tasks outside software development, evidence that the demand for autonomous AI work was already there before Work had a dedicated interface.
How ChatGPT Work Differs From Standard Chat
The Chat tab is built for single-turn interactions, you ask, it answers. Work is built for multi-step projects that can take minutes or hours, pulling from multiple data sources and producing finished outputs.
The key differences are:
Work can access your connected apps via plugins and pull live data into its output, rather than relying only on what you paste into the conversation.
Work creates real documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and web apps, not just text you have to copy elsewhere.
Work runs Scheduled Tasks, recurring or triggered automations that run on a schedule or when an event occurs, even when you are not at your computer.
On desktop, Work can use your local files, apps, and a built-in browser to gather information and take actions across your computer, something the Chat tab cannot do.
Usage in Work is measured differently from Chat, complex tasks consume more of your plan's included usage than a simple chat response.
How to Get Started With ChatGPT Work
ChatGPT Work is available on web and mobile for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans. For the full desktop experience, including local file access, Computer Use, and the built-in browser, you need the ChatGPT desktop app for Mac or Windows.
Open ChatGPT and switch to the Work tab. On web and mobile it appears in the navigation; on desktop it sits alongside Chat and Codex.
Connect the apps and tools where your work already lives. Type @ in the prompt to reference a specific connected app, for example, @Slack, @GoogleDrive, or @Gmail.
Give Work a task you already know well, for example, "Summarise last week's Slack messages from the engineering channel and list the open action items." Starting with familiar work makes it easier to judge the quality of the output.
Follow its progress in real time. You can answer questions, change direction, or approve important actions as Work proceeds.
Review the finished output, a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or web app, and request further changes if needed.
Scheduled Tasks: ChatGPT Work on Autopilot
Scheduled Tasks are one of the most practical features in ChatGPT Work. They let you instruct ChatGPT to carry out an action once, on a recurring schedule, or when a specific event occurs in a connected app, without you being present.
Examples of what you can schedule:
Every morning at 8am: check dashboards and websites for changes, summarise what is new, and send a briefing.
Each week: review new Slack messages in a project channel and refresh the meeting agenda.
When a new customer email arrives: read it, pull context from the CRM, and prepare a draft reply.
At month end: gather figures from connected spreadsheets and finance tools, then produce a variance report.
What ChatGPT Work Can Produce
ChatGPT Work can create finished materials you can share or act on immediately:
Documents and reports, research summaries, executive briefings, project plans, proposals.
Spreadsheets, data analysis, financial models, tracking dashboards.
Presentations, slide decks that can be exported to PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Sites, interactive web apps, dashboards, and portals you can share via a URL (available in public beta).
Pages, shareable documents built for collaboration with teammates and ChatGPT simultaneously.
Which ChatGPT Plans Include Work?
ChatGPT Work is included with Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans. On the ChatGPT desktop app, Work is available to all plans including Free, but the full web, mobile, and cloud feature set requires a paid plan.
Usage in Work counts against your plan's included usage allowance, not a separate Work credit. More complex or longer-running tasks consume more usage. OpenAI notes that Work follows the same usage structure as Codex, meaning heavy users on Plus may want to consider Pro for extended projects.
Real-World Examples From Early Users
OpenAI shared several enterprise case studies when Work launched in July 2026:
Zapier's marketing team used Work to trace customer touchpoints across their CRM, email, and other tools, finding a seven-figure pipeline gap and building a weekly executive dashboard, work that previously required days of manual analysis.
RingCentral's R&D team turned manual monthly launch checks into a repeatable workflow, letting one person support roughly 50 product managers rather than one.
Virgin Atlantic used Work to compare its passenger experience against competitors across five years of planning data, reducing weeks of research to hours.
ChatGPT Work is closely related to Codex, for teams doing software engineering work, see our guide to ChatGPT Codex to understand how the two modes fit together.
New to ChatGPT altogether? Start with What Is ChatGPT? The Complete 2026 Guide before diving into Work mode.
Frequently Asked Questions About ChatGPT Work
Is ChatGPT Work available on the free plan?
On the ChatGPT desktop app, all plans including Free can access the Work tab. However, the full feature set, including web and mobile access, Scheduled Tasks, plugin integrations, and Codex, requires a paid plan (Plus or above).
What apps can ChatGPT Work connect to?
ChatGPT Work connects to apps via plugins. Supported apps include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, SharePoint, Gmail, Google Calendar, Salesforce, Jira, Notion, and many others available in the ChatGPT plugin directory. You can also direct ChatGPT to a specific plugin by typing @ in the Work prompt.
Can ChatGPT Work access files on my computer?
On the desktop app (Mac or Windows), yes. Computer Use lets ChatGPT Work access and act on your local files, apps, and a built-in browser. This capability is not available on the web or mobile versions of Work.
What is the difference between ChatGPT Work and Codex?
Work is designed for general professional tasks, documents, research, analysis, automation, across any domain. Codex is a specialised coding agent built for software engineering tasks: writing code, reviewing pull requests, running tests, and managing repositories. Both are available in the ChatGPT desktop app and share usage from your plan's included allowance.
Does ChatGPT Work continue when I close my laptop?
Yes, for Scheduled Tasks and cloud-based workflows. Scheduled Tasks run on their defined schedule regardless of whether your computer is on. For tasks that require Computer Use on your local machine, your computer needs to be running.
What model does ChatGPT Work use?
ChatGPT Work launched with GPT-5.6 as its model in July 2026. As of September 2026, GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna are available in Work, with GPT-6.1 Sol rolling out as the primary Work model from late September 2026. GPT-6 Astra Ultrafast is available in Work on Pro 500 and Enterprise plans.
The Bottom Line
ChatGPT Work represents a genuine shift in what AI can do for knowledge workers. It is no longer just a tool for answering questions, it is a system for getting projects done. The results from early enterprise users are striking: work that took weeks reduced to hours, and tasks that needed a team now handled by one person with Work running alongside them.
Whether you are a developer, analyst, marketer, or manager, the best starting point is to take a task you do repeatedly, and try handing it to Work. The tools continue to improve rapidly as OpenAI expands what Work and its underlying models can do.
