AI-HOY, AInauts,

Welcome to a fresh issue of your favorite newsletter!

This week, it felt as though ChatGPT no longer just wants to answer questions. It wants your whole workday: your tools are moving into the chat, answers are turning into little apps, and ChatGPT is even joining your meetings.

It sounds useful. And it is. But who owns your data when it's all over?

Also today: six money-saving tips, a new model that's around 75% cheaper, and a four-hour film about Elon that raises a few questions.

Here's what we've packed for you:

Let's get into it!

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OpenAI has rolled out five updates in two weeks that seem small on their own: your Dot assistant keeps working in the background, other companies' apps run inside the chat, any app with an MCP server can connect, answers become interactive, and ChatGPT listens in on meetings.

Together, they point in one direction: ChatGPT wants to be where you work, not just where you ask questions. Your everyday cockpit.

With Dots, ChatGPT gets an assistant that doesn't wait for a question. Your Dot runs around the clock on its own cloud computer with a browser, follows your goals, and checks in on its own, including in Slack or Teams.

Because it knows our whole history, we're using it more and more. Yesterday, we spent half an hour giving it jobs from our phone while on the road: "Add a column to the Google Sheet linking to the invoice," "Create a reply draft in Gmail," "Add the publication date to all the in-depth articles in our community"...

We've already covered the catch: you can't inspect what it stores about you or delete individual items. In the EU and Switzerland, Dots is initially available only with Business Premium.

ChatGPT Plugin Extensions let outside apps run directly inside ChatGPT, for example in a sidebar next to the conversation.

The interesting part is distribution: ChatGPT suggests relevant plugins in the middle of a conversation. With 1.2 billion weekly users, that can bring real traffic.

Of course, OpenAI wants to keep you in the chat. For small tools, it's still a new channel, a little like Google SEO 20 years ago.

Pietro shows what's possible with Magic Path: more than half a million dollars in annual recurring revenue in one week. With an important caveat: OpenAI supported him as a launch partner.

Two catches: will people even notice they're using someone else's app? And OpenAI offers neither built-in payments nor revenue sharing.

The solution: the plugin is your storefront, but the checkout stays with you. And your brand stays visible throughout.

We tried it ourselves with a new project and are now waiting for approval. The process was surprisingly simple: ChatGPT Work handled practically everything, including sorting things out with OpenAI support.

MCP sounds more technical than it is. Think of it as the USB connector for AI tools. You can now connect any app that offers an MCP server. That directory is in German.

This used to require Developer Mode. Now you can open chatgpt.com/plugins, choose "Add" and "Create custom MCP server," and enter the address. Which plan gets what is changing almost weekly. Only connect servers from providers you trust!

Pro tip: your tool has no MCP server, but it does have an API? Give your agent the API documentation and ask it to build one. For ChatGPT, it needs to be reachable online, for example through Cloudflare.

Screenshot from our German-language setup, showing the custom MCP server configuration.

In August, you still had to call @Visualize explicitly. Now Intelligent UI lets ChatGPT decide when a calculator, chart, or map will help more than text.

To encourage it, put this snippet in your Custom Instructions:

Or simply add "interactive visualization" to your prompt. Give it a try!

OpenAI is also gradually releasing more features as optional plugins.

The new Meetings plugin for the Mac app works without a bot joining the call. Your summary and to-dos are ready afterward. Only the transcript is stored, not the audio.

Our screenshots below show the German-language interface and a Swiss German test meeting. Install the Meetings plugin, then pin it in the sidebar.

Our Swiss German test was underwhelming. Standard German and English work reasonably well. For now, it's a beta for Pro and Business.

Pro tip: paid ChatGPT plans now also let you upload audio files directly, transcribe them, summarize them, and ask questions about them.

We've already unpacked why this doesn't automatically doom SaaS tools. But think of the iPhone: it swallowed the camera, satnav, and MP3 player, while the App Store made services like Uber possible.

With AI, we're seeing that first part now. We used to pay Gamma, Granola, Wispr Flow, and Canva for slides, meeting notes, dictation, and simple graphics. Today, the assistant handles those on the side.

At the same time, vibe coding is creating new, custom-built apps. We've replaced Wispr Flow with our own dictation app, AInauten Voice.

The big tools, such as your CRM, bookkeeping system, or store, remain. You just open them yourself less often. Where your data lives and which rules apply are still determined by the tool.

Then there's platform risk. Custom GPTs are being retired on December 11, and their users don't migrate with them. Our free GPT-to-Skill Exporter browser extension lets you take your GPTs into the tool of your choice as skills.

Claude is taking the opposite route. ChatGPT brings the apps into its world; Claude goes out into the apps.

Take Claude Dashboards: you ask a question, and Claude builds a dashboard that stays connected to your live data, for example from Salesforce.

Motion turns a report into a short explainer video, but only for Team and Enterprise. Claude also works as a sidebar inside Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

The difference: ChatGPT builds an interface for the moment; Claude builds an output.

ChatGPT wins because you're already there. Use that advantage, but don't forget who owns the place. Anything you can't export is only rented.

That's why tools that open up will win, like our partner sevdesk, featured last week. Sevdesk is a German-market bookkeeping product; its linked offer is in German. Ask one question before adopting any new tool: Can I connect it to my AI?

A new beta feature for Pro users in the desktop app, Work and Codex, hints at how far this goes: it suggests your next message, based on the conversation and how you talk to it. First, the chat answered your questions. Now it asks them for you. Claude users have known and loved this for a while.

It's convenient. But the better a system knows you, the harder it becomes to leave. So get your data out, into files you own.

Top engineers at Anthropic say AI now writes 100% of their code.

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These 100+ Claude Code hacks show you exactly how. Sign up for The Code and get:

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Last week, we tested how much model choice and effort change consumption. Since then, a model has arrived that seems made for saving: Claude Haiku 5.5.

According to Anthropic, it costs around 75% less on average than Haiku 4.5 while performing noticeably better, especially at coding. It's available in all Claude plans, including the free plan, and in Claude Code.

Our reader Mike also sent us his best saving tips. We added our own:

Two catches with Haiku 5.5: it breaks text into around 30% more tokens than the old model. And the low price applies only to requests up to 100,000 tokens. Above that, everything costs five times as much. The price advantage is still huge, but keep the context small.

To try it, select Haiku 5.5 in Claude and use this prompt:

We burn through most limits not on difficult tasks, but on routine work using the big model.

Pick a recurring task, run it on Haiku 5.5 for a week, and compare quality, time, and usage. Only then will you know where you're really saving.

"Musk", by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, is currently in U.S. theaters. It's a monster documentary, around four hours long!

Afterward, our view of the world's richest man was a little more nuanced.

One question stayed with us: who are we actually giving our data to when we use Grok and similar tools? The film itself is an AI case study: because Musk didn't participate, an AI avatar speaks for him, using only genuine quotes.

His contributions to electric cars and space are undeniable. SpaceX lands its rockets and has made spaceflight drastically cheaper.

Behind the scenes, the film says lawsuits, investigations, and accidents were swept under the rug. And Musk didn't found Tesla; he joined as an early investor.

People who were very close to him, personally and professionally, speak in the film: former partners, family members, and business associates.

What stayed with us most was how much power converges in one person.

Teslas film streets around the world through their cameras. Grok accesses X posts in real time. Starlink delivers internet even to war zones, and SpaceX launches the satellites that make it possible. Fittingly, Starlink is now also becoming a mobile carrier.

Then there's the enormous computing power of the Colossus data centers. Data, compute, and reach in one pair of hands: for AI, that's the perfect combination.

Director Alex Gibney calls xAI "the most reckless AI company there is." That's his opinion, but it gets to the point: power without oversight.

With Grok Bot, Musk is turning that combination into one of the strongest AI agents: an assistant with its own computer that works in your tools around the clock.

The trouble is, Grok Bot isn't sticking to the script. After four hours of documentary, we wanted to dislike it. But it just keeps getting better. Since this week, it picks the best model for each task, including Claude.

Then there's politics. That linked report is in German. Musk put hundreds of millions into Trump's campaign, and the film suggests that without Trump's victory he probably would have ended up in court.

The cases against his companies that subsequently fizzled out are well documented. DOGE, the failed Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting program he led, also weakened the U.S. agencies investigating his companies.

The more an agent does for you, the more it matters who controls it.

If you give it your logins, inbox, and company data, you should know who's behind it. That applies to Musk just as much as Altman or Amodei. You can think Grok Bot is a strong product and see the man behind it differently.

The film isn't a hit piece, but it is clearly critical. When it will reach Europe or streaming services is still unclear. It's certainly worth watching.

That's a wrap! See you in the next issue.

Reto & Fabian from AInauten