During its DevDay 2026 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, OpenAI introduced Dots, a new line of persistent artificial intelligence agents designed to operate continuously rather than responding to isolated prompts. The company positioned the launch as a direct response to Meta’s Muse initiative, emphasizing a shift toward autonomous task completion.
Powered by the GPT-6 Astra model, Dots are visually represented as customizable, blob-like characters. Unlike traditional single-turn chatbots, these agents remain active in the background, continuously browsing the web and gathering context from connected applications to fulfill multi-step projects. Over time, they adapt to individual user preferences, learning habits to provide more relevant assistance.
OpenAI demonstrated the utility of Dots through several scenarios. In one instance, an agent noticed a user was working through dinner via their calendar and proactively suggested Grubhub delivery options with price comparisons. In another example, the agent collaborated with a user to develop and launch a new website from scratch.
Integration spans multiple platforms, including ChatGPT, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, with user context synced across all modes. Additionally, subscribers to the Pro tier can join a waitlist to message their Dots directly through iMessage or RCS on Android devices.
The feature is immediately available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $100 monthly. Consistent with OpenAI’s typical release strategy, the tools are initially reserved for higher-tier users before expanding to a broader audience. Currently, users can manage a single Dot, though the company expects to enable control over multiple agents simultaneously in the future.
Finally, something that can handle multi-step projects without me micromanaging every single step. Saving my sanity!
An AI that constantly browses the web for you? That is a massive data harvesting opportunity wrapped in a cute blob.
Wait, can these Dots actually understand context across Slack and Teams seamlessly? That integration piece sounds huge if it works.
GPT-6 Astra? Really? And it costs a hundred bucks a month? I’ll stick to coding my own bots, thanks.
Always-on agents are the future. I just hope they don’t start ordering weird stuff when I’m stressed eating.