Email content

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

How to Set Up and Use Your First OpenAI Dot (Full Guide)

A practical guide to giving your Dot an ongoing responsibility, connected apps, scheduled tasks, permission boundaries, approval rules, and a clear definition of done.

ChatGPT for All

Oct 1

∙

Preview

READ IN APP

On September 29, I watched the entire OpenAI DevDay livestream.

I expected new models, better benchmarks, and a few impressive demonstrations.

But one announcement made me stop and think about where AI is actually going.

It was not another chatbot.

It was the OpenAI Dot.

A few weeks earlier, Meta had introduced Muse, its own personal AI agent. Then OpenAI introduced Dots at DevDay as always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra. Each Dot has its own cloud computer, can work across connected apps, and can continue making progress between conversations.

That changes the relationship we have with AI.

A normal ChatGPT conversation waits for you.

A Dot does not have to.

You can give it an ongoing responsibility, schedule recurring work, let it monitor approved information, and ask it to return when something needs your judgment.

For example, you could give a Dot responsibility for tracking a project, preparing a daily research brief, organizing customer feedback, or checking an article before publication.

But this is also where people will make their first mistake.

They will create a Dot and say:

Handle everything for me.

That sounds efficient. It is not.

A vague responsibility creates vague decisions. Broad access creates unnecessary risk. And an always-on agent without a clear output can generate more noise than useful work.

The better approach is simple:

Give your Dot one responsibility, limited access, a reviewable output, and a clear point where human judgment takes over.

In this guide, we will build a complete Research and Publishing Dot from the ground up.

You will get the exact setup sequence, a copy-ready responsibility prompt, connected-app guidance, Custom Rules, scheduled tasks, approval boundaries, a verification report, and a 14-day test for deciding whether your Dot deserves more responsibility...