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Apps SDK

developers.openai.com

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Re: Apps SDK

#251

Post by ed »

reb wrote: post #244
ed wrote: post #238

A bit underwhelming when you see what's actually on offer. "Apps" are really just MCP servers, with an extension to allow returning HTML. A lot of the fundamental issues with MCP are still present: MCP is pretty single-player, users must "pull" content from the service, and the model of "enabling connections" is fairly unintuitive compared to "opening an app." Ideally apps would have a dedicated entry point, be able…

MCP has this in the spec: it's called "elicitation", and I'm pretty confident this push from OpenAI sets the stage for them to support it. Once a service can actively involve you and/or your LLM in ongoing interaction, MCP servers start to get real sticky. We can safely assume the install/auth process will also get much less technical as pressure to deliver services to non-technical users increases.

> Once a service can actively involve you and/or your LLM in ongoing interaction

Is there any progress on that front? That would unlock a lot of applications that aren't feasible at the moment.

Edit: Sampling is a piece of the puzzle https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-03-26/cli...

I also see a lot of discussion on Github around agent to agent (a2a) capabilities. So it's a big use case, and seems obvious to the people involved with MCP.

Re: Apps SDK

#252

Post by dworks »

darajava wrote: post #171

I don't understand, what could be built with this platform that wouldn't be made obsolete by conceivable updates to ChatGPT? Another commenter suggested a hotel search function: > Find me hotels in Capetown that have a pool by the beach .Should cost between 200 dollars to 800 dollars a night ChatGPT can already do this. Similarly, their own pizza lookup example seems like it would exist or nearly exist with current f…

> Find me hotels in Capetown that have a pool by the beach .Should cost between 200 dollars to 800 dollars a night

I built this 18 months ago at an OTA platform. We parse the query and identify which terms are locations, which are hotel features, which are room amenities etc. Then we apply those filters (we have thousands of attributes that can be filtered on, but cannot display all of them in the UI) and display the hotel search results in the regular UI. The input query is also through the normal search box.

This does not need and should not be done in a chatbot UX. All the implementation is on the backend and the right display is the already existing UI. This is semantic search and it comes as a standard capability in ElasticSearch, Supabase etc. Though we built our own version.

Re: Apps SDK

#253

Post by handfuloflight »

saberience wrote: post #139
spongebobstoes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deploying an app to 700M people?

That's like saying making a website is like deploying an app for 7B people. Sure, but deploying a website or app doesn't mean anyone's going to use it, does it? I could make an iOS app, I could make a website, I could make a ChatGPT app... if no one uses it, it doesn't matter how big the userbase of iOS, the internet, or ChatGPT is...

Right this same sleight of hand is encoded in the language used in the announcement to make building on this platform to be attractive seeming.

Re: Apps SDK

#254

Post by spullara »

sert_121 wrote: post #246

It's interesting to see how chatgpt is becoming more and more of a starting point of the web exploration, at which they're like, why even bother searching at this point, we'll just have default workflows for maps, buy (integration of stripe already marks it), booking airlines etc, which covers so much basic stuff people would do anyways. The biggest bottleneck for this for the past two years imo wasn't the models, bu…

OpenAI has had this opportunity to do this since their meteoric adoption and fumbled it with plugins and then GPTs. Ironically, Anthropic's MCP could be just the ingredient needed to capture this position.

Re: Apps SDK

#255

Post by stackedinserter »

sert_121 wrote: post #246

It's interesting to see how chatgpt is becoming more and more of a starting point of the web exploration, at which they're like, why even bother searching at this point, we'll just have default workflows for maps, buy (integration of stripe already marks it), booking airlines etc, which covers so much basic stuff people would do anyways. The biggest bottleneck for this for the past two years imo wasn't the models, bu…

The main showstopper here is trust.

I just can't let anything AI make decisions that have consequences, like spending money, buying anything, planning vacations, flights etc. It's so bad now (I've just tried) that I'm not sure if it will ever gain my trust.

Re: Apps SDK

#256

Post by spullara »

dworks wrote: post #252
darajava wrote: post #171

I don't understand, what could be built with this platform that wouldn't be made obsolete by conceivable updates to ChatGPT? Another commenter suggested a hotel search function: > Find me hotels in Capetown that have a pool by the beach .Should cost between 200 dollars to 800 dollars a night ChatGPT can already do this. Similarly, their own pizza lookup example seems like it would exist or nearly exist with current f…

> Find me hotels in Capetown that have a pool by the beach .Should cost between 200 dollars to 800 dollars a night I built this 18 months ago at an OTA platform. We parse the query and identify which terms are locations, which are hotel features, which are room amenities etc. Then we apply those filters (we have thousands of attributes that can be filtered on, but cannot display all of them in the UI) and display the…

You want it in a chat with other tools and intelligence so that you can give softer preferences and for it to judge reviews and the like. Perhaps even look at the room layout and photos to see if it is something you would like. There are good reasons to surround the tool you describe with AI.

Re: Apps SDK

#257

Post by JambalayaJimbo »

peab wrote: post #148
munk-a wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to see a chat agent deployed that is more popular than tailored browsing methods. The most charitable way to explain this is that the tailored browsing methods already in place are the results of years of careful design and battle testing and that the chat agent is providing most of the value that a tailored browsing method would but without any of the investment required to bring a traditional UX to fruit…

agree. Thing is, for those who paid attention to the last chatBot hype cycle, we already knew this. Look at how Google Assistant was portrayed back in 2016. People thought you'd be buying starbucks via the chat. Turns out the starbucks app has a better UX

Current LLMs are way better at understanding language than the old voice assistants.

Re: Apps SDK

#258

Post by aniviacat »

nicce wrote: post #36
emilsedgh wrote: post #31

I see a lot of negative comments here but to me, it was obvious this is where OAI should land. They want to be the platform in which you tell what you want, and OAI does it for you. It's gonna connect to your inbox, calendar, payment methods, and you'll just ask it to do something and it will, using those apps. This means OAI won't need ads. Just rev share.

> This means OAI won't need ads. Ads are defenitely there. Just hidden so deeply in the black box which is generating the useful tips :)

I wonder what the ad labeling (according to EU law) would look like in that case.

In my (non-lawyer) understanding, each message potentially containing sponsored content (which would be every message, if the bias is encoded in the LLM itself,) would need to be marked as an ad individually.

That would make for an odd user interface.

Re: Apps SDK

#259

Post by majormajor »

anal_reactor wrote: post #151
munk-a wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to see a chat agent deployed that is more popular than tailored browsing methods. The most charitable way to explain this is that the tailored browsing methods already in place are the results of years of careful design and battle testing and that the chat agent is providing most of the value that a tailored browsing method would but without any of the investment required to bring a traditional UX to fruit…

> the tailored browsing methods already in place are the results of years of careful design and battle testing Have you ever worked in a corporation? Do you really think that Windows 8 UI was the fruit of years of careful design? What about Workday? > but it is bizarre that so many businesses seem to be discarding battle tested UXes for chatbots Not really. If the chatbot is smart enough then chatbot is the more natu…

> Not really. If the chatbot is smart enough then chatbot is the more natural interface. I've seen people who prefer to say "hey siri set alarm clock for 10 AM" rather than use the UI. Which makes sense, because language is the way people literally have evolved specialized organs for. If anything, language is the "battle tested UX", and the other stuff is temporary fad.

I do that all the time with Siri for setting alarms and timers. Certain things have extremely simple speech interfaces. And we've already found a ton of them over the last decade+. If it was useful to use speech for ordering an uber, it would've been worth it for me to learn the specific syntax Alexa wanted.

Do I want to talk to a chatbot to get a detailed table of potential flight and hotel options? Hell no. It doesn't matter how smart it is, I want to see them on a map and be able to hover, click into them, etc. Speech would be slow and awful for that.

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