Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#51

Post by kgeist » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:16 AM UTC

kevinslin wrote: post #35

kgeist wrote: post #27

Tried the GitHub app, made sure everything was properly connected, and asked a question about one of my repositories. It repeatedly claimed (5 times) that it wasn't connected and couldn't do anything, telling me to check the checkboxes that were already checked. Only after I showed it a screenshot of the settings did it suddenly comply and answer the question. I guess it still needs more polish.

hi kgeist - i work on the team that manages the github app. are you able to share a conversation where the github connector did not work? feel to message me at https://x.com/kevins8 (dm's open)

I think I understand what went wrong. I was confused by the instructions and ChatGPT's UI.

I asked the GitHub app to review my repository, and the app told me to click the GitHub icon and select the repository from the menu to grant it access. I did just that and then resent the existing message (which is to be expected from a user). After testing a bit more, from what I understand, the updated setting is applied only to new messages, not to existing ones. The instructions didn't mention that I needed to repeat my question as a separate message again.

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#52

Post by WhyOhWhyQ » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

What's the benefit in giving free labor to Sam Ctrlman beyond what he's already extracted? And are they just going to steal whatever good apps get submitted?

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#53

Post by _pdp_ » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

@Spotify what are my top songs

I don’t have the ability to pull your personal top songs directly from Spotify because that requires accessing your authenticated listening data. You can view them in Spotify by going to “Your Library” → “Made For You” → “Your Top Songs”.

@Figma design simple hello world poster

I don’t have the ability to create designs directly in Figma, but I can guide you to quickly create a simple “Hello World” poster there.

---

am I using is wrong?

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#54

Post by Eldodi » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

_pdp_ wrote: post #53

@Spotify what are my top songs I don’t have the ability to pull your personal top songs directly from Spotify because that requires accessing your authenticated listening data. You can view them in Spotify by going to “Your Library” → “Made For You” → “Your Top Songs”. @Figma design simple hello world poster I don’t have the ability to create designs directly in Figma, but I can guide you to quickly create a simple “…

I think you don't need to add the @, just prompt: Figma, etc... And of course check that you are connected to the app in your settings

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#55

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:38 AM UTC

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #52

What's the benefit in giving free labor to Sam Ctrlman beyond what he's already extracted? And are they just going to steal whatever good apps get submitted?

[deleted]

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#56

Post by frumplestlatz » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

sebastianingino wrote: post #47

sublinear wrote: post #7

> Apps extend ChatGPT conversations by bringing in new context and letting users take actions like order groceries, turn an outline into a slide deck, or search for an apartment. Between this description and their guidelines these don't really sound like "apps", but a way to integrate an existing app with ChatGPT sessions. I'm trying to figure out what's in it for the developer other than ultimately taking users away…

The idea behind Apps is that they can expand the capabilities of ChatGPT in multiple ways. Text-only MCPs are a type of app that can provide both actions and context in your conversations, but Apps can do much more now that you can bring in custom UI in multiple formats (card, full-screen, etc) as we showed at DevDay in October. Btw UI is proposed for the MCP spec in SEP-1865. Since then, I’ve seen some very impressi…

I'm really unexcited about bolting HTML/CSS/JS and the entire webstack into MCP so that a full-featured MCP client has to carry a full web browser, too.

I expect there's a pretty wide divide between what people who write local MCP servers want, versus what people who write cloud webstack MCP webapps want.

Personally, I've been adding local native UI to my MCP servers, but I realize that's probably a losing battle, and if I want to integrate with newer tooling, I'm going to be stuck in web hell.

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#57

Post by frumplestlatz » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:00 AM UTC

sanex wrote: post #29

ttoinou wrote: post #22

How do developers prevent users exfiltrating their apps’ prompts?

Your app doesn't really have prompts, it's just an MCP server that can also serve react components.

Technically MCP servers can have prompts that get exposed as user commands (/) in apps like Claude Code.

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#58

Post by digitaltrees » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

They. Will. Steal. Anything. That. Works.

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#59

Post by inetknght » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #22

How do developers prevent users exfiltrating their apps’ prompts?

Why should developers' prompts be proprietary at all?

Re: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT

#60

Post by timfsu » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 2:45 AM UTC

It's not clear how much ChatGPT is investing in the discovery part of the app store experience, so this seems like mostly a way for users to install apps they're already familiar with and use them from inside a chat. For now, it seems like you have to explicitly @-mention an app to use it.