OpenAI plans to merge ChatGPT’s Chat and Work tabs starting in December, bringing its agentic capabilities into the main ChatGPT experience.
The change will initially be tested with selected users to gather feedback before being rolled out more widely, according to information shared by OpenAI with users and published on its website.
Currently, ChatGPT’s desktop app separates Chat and Work into different tabs within the ChatGPT section, while Codex remains a separate experience.
Under the planned integration, users will be able to move from asking questions and exploring ideas to assigning tasks that ChatGPT can carry out, all within the same interface.
What will change for ChatGPT users?
In an email to users, OpenAI said the integrated experience would allow people to bring in files and plugins and ask ChatGPT to build websites, create presentations or perform tasks on the web while reviewing and guiding its work.
“Codex will remain a separate experience in the ChatGPT desktop app,” the company said.
The move is intended to make ChatGPT’s agentic capabilities more accessible by reducing the need to switch between separate interfaces.
ChatGPT and Codex will share usage allowances
The integration will also change how usage is measured for certain subscription plans.
Starting in December, Plus, Pro and Business users will share their usage allowance across ChatGPT and Codex as OpenAI brings Work capabilities into the main experience.
The company said usage will be measured in tokens, the units of information that AI models process and generate.
How much of an allowance a user consumes will depend on the model selected and the complexity of the task. More advanced models and demanding tasks generally use more tokens.
However, OpenAI said Instant chat will not count towards this usage allowance.
The company expects most users to experience little disruption, although some may need to wait longer for their usage allowances to reset, depending on their usage patterns and the models they choose.
OpenAI follows Anthropic’s interface changes
The planned integration comes after rival AI company Anthropic merged Claude’s chat and Cowork functions into a single interface in September.
OpenAI said it was preparing for the transition to minimise disruption to existing workflows and expected most users would not need to wait for usage resets more frequently than they currently do.
The company has not indicated that Codex will be absorbed into the main ChatGPT interface, confirming that the coding-focused experience will remain separate in the desktop app.
