OpenAI has introduced a major upgrade to ChatGPT’s capabilities: Agent Mode. This feature marks a shift from a simple conversational assistant to a powerful digital agent capable of executing tasks, navigating websites, creating documents, and integrating with real-world apps—all while keeping you in control. Whether you’re a busy professional, a content creator, or someone who simply wants to automate repetitive tasks, this guide will walk you through how to enable Agent Mode, what it can do, and how to create reusable prompts to maximize its power.
1. What Is ChatGPT Agent Mode?
Agent Mode allows ChatGPT to go beyond generating text and instead take real actions on your behalf. It can browse the internet, fill out forms, use tools like Google Calendar and Gmail, create presentations, summarize data, and even automate multistep workflows. Think of it as a personal digital assistant that can reason, plan, and execute complex tasks across tools and services.
What makes it truly unique is its live narration and transparency. The agent narrates every step it’s about to take, asks for your approval before doing anything sensitive, and gives you full control to interrupt, pause, or take over at any moment. It also has built-in safety features, like Watch Mode, disabled memory during tasks, and prompt-injection defenses, making it secure and user-friendly.
2. How to Enable Agent Mode in ChatGPT
If you are a subscriber to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, or Team plans, enabling Agent Mode is easy. Here’s how:
- Log in to ChatGPT using your subscribed account.
- Open a new chat or continue in an existing one.
- In the message area, locate the Tools menu—this is often shown as a dropdown or wrench icon.
- Select “Agent mode” from the available tools to activate Agent Mode.
- Alternatively, you can type the command
/agentinto the chat, and Agent Mode will be enabled.
Once activated, ChatGPT becomes your agent for that session, ready to receive high-level tasks and carry them out across various tools and services.
3. What Can the Agent Do?
With Agent Mode enabled, ChatGPT becomes capable of:
- Web browsing and information gathering: It can research topics online, read articles, and compile summaries.
- File creation and formatting: It can generate PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and Word documents.
- App integration: The agent can connect to services like Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, GitHub, and Slack to retrieve or send information.
- Task automation: It can perform repeatable actions, like summarizing your meetings, creating reports, or generating content packages.
- Website interaction: It can click, scroll, and fill out forms on websites, functioning like a real user.
Each of these actions is accompanied by a narrated explanation, and the agent pauses for your approval when it’s about to take action, especially if the task involves sensitive data or outputs.
4. Example Use Cases
To understand how versatile the Agent Mode is, here are a few practical examples:
Creating a Competitor Analysis Slide Deck
You might say:
“Research three competitors in the marketing automation space and create a presentation that outlines their pricing models, strengths, and recent news.”
The agent will search online, extract key insights, organize them into slides, and present you with a downloadable PowerPoint file. You can review and approve the content before it’s finalized.
Planning a Themed Dinner
Prompt:
“Plan a Japanese-style dinner for four. Find recipes, create a shopping list, and simulate placing the ingredients in an online grocery cart.”
The agent will gather recipes, list ingredients, and (with your approval) interact with a grocery website to prepare a cart for review.
Summarizing Your Week
Prompt:
“Connect to my Google Calendar, summarize my meetings this week, and include news updates about any companies I met with.”
The agent can link to your calendar, extract key events, look up company-related news, and generate a concise summary for your review or presentation.
5. Safety and Control Features
Agent Mode is built with user control and safety at its core:
- Watch Mode: For sensitive tasks, the agent will pause and display the action it’s about to take, waiting for your approval.
- Memory is off: Agent sessions do not use ChatGPT’s memory feature, which helps keep your data private.
- Session cleanup: Any data or cookies from web sessions are cleared after the session ends to protect privacy.
- Prompt security: Advanced defenses help prevent prompt-injection or misuse of automation capabilities.
You can stop or modify any task at any time during the agent’s workflow.
6. Creating Reusable Prompts with Agent Mode
If you have a task you want to repeat regularly—like generating weekly reports or creating a content summary—you can set up reusable prompts using either Custom GPTs or Custom Instructions.
Option 1: Use a Custom GPT (Recommended for Pro Users)
Custom GPTs are personalized versions of ChatGPT that retain specific instructions and tool configurations.
Steps to Create One:
- Click “Explore GPTs” in the ChatGPT sidebar.
- Select “Create a GPT.”
- In the GPT Builder:
- Give it a descriptive name (e.g., “Weekly Report Generator”).
- In the instructions, describe what you want the GPT to do. Example: “You are a personal assistant who summarizes my calendar events and client news every week. Use Agent Mode to access my Google Calendar and browse for news articles. Create a polished Word report and wait for my approval before sharing.”
- Enable necessary tools like:
- Web Browsing
- Code Interpreter
- File Creation
- Third-Party App Integrations
- Click “Deploy” to finish.
Once saved, you can use this GPT anytime with consistent results. It will follow your instructions and use Agent Mode tools appropriately.
Option 2: Use Custom Instructions + Manual Agent Activation
If you’re not using Custom GPTs, you can still streamline workflows using Custom Instructions.
How to Set This Up:
- Go to Settings > Personalization > Custom Instructions.
- In the “How should ChatGPT respond?” field, enter something like: “When I say ‘run weekly workflow,’ activate Agent Mode and summarize my meetings and related news. Generate a report and confirm with me before sending or saving anything.”
- Save your settings.
Each time you want to run the task, type:
“Run weekly workflow”
Then activate Agent Mode manually by selecting it from the Tools menu or typing /agent. The assistant will follow the pre-set logic you’ve defined.
7. How Is Agent Mode Different from Search Mode?
If you’ve used ChatGPT’s Web Browsing (also called Search Mode) before, you might wonder how it compares to the new Agent Mode. While both can access the internet and retrieve information, their purpose, behavior, and capabilities are quite different.
Search Mode: Quick Information Lookup
Search Mode is designed for simple tasks that require reading and summarizing web content. When you ask ChatGPT a question, it can’t answer from its training data; it uses browsing to look up the answer in real time.
For example, if you ask:
“What are the latest headlines about electric vehicles?”
ChatGPT in Search Mode will search the web, scan a few sources, and summarize what it finds. That’s the extent of its role: read, summarize, and report.
It cannot interact with websites (like clicking buttons or filling out forms), and it doesn’t create files or connect with external apps.
Agent Mode: Task Execution and Automation
Agent Mode includes everything Search Mode can do—but goes much further.
It doesn’t just find information. It can:
- Interact with websites visually, just like a person would (scroll, click, fill out forms).
- Perform multistep tasks, like gathering research, creating files (slides, docs, spreadsheets), and formatting them.
- Connect to apps and services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, or GitHub to fetch or send data.
- Narrate its actions step by step and wait for your approval before executing anything sensitive.
Let’s compare them with a concrete example:
Example: Planning Conference Attendance
Search Mode:
“What are the top AI conferences in 2025?”
→ ChatGPT browses the web and gives you a list.
Agent Mode:
“Find three top AI conferences for 2025, choose the ones most relevant to AI research, draft a registration email for each, and add them to my calendar.”
→ The agent:
- Searches for conferences
- Filters based on your interests
- Drafts personalized emails
- Interacts with your calendar
- Prepares everything for your review and approval
In short, Search Mode is great for quick research, but Agent Mode is built for workflows and automation. When you want ChatGPT to take initiative, build documents, or operate across multiple tools, Agent Mode is the better choice.
You can switch between both depending on the task—but for serious productivity, Agent Mode unlocks a whole new level of capability.
8. How Agent Mode Handles Passwords and App Integrations
You Log In — Not the Agent
For any integration (like Google Calendar, Gmail, Drive, GitHub, or Slack), you authorize the connection manually through a secure OAuth login flow. The agent never sees or stores your password. Instead, you’re redirected to the service’s official login page (e.g., Google login), where you grant permission directly.
This means:
- You sign in on your own browser.
- ChatGPT only gets a temporary access token (with limited scope and expiration).
- No passwords are typed into the chat, stored, or visible to the model.
Granular Permission Control
During the login flow, you can control exactly what the agent has access to — such as:
- Only viewing calendar events (not modifying)
- Accessing files from a specific Google Drive folder
- Reading Gmail headers but not sending emails
This follows standard third-party app practices, much like authorizing apps with Google or Slack elsewhere.
Session-Based Access
The agent uses app integrations only during the current session or task. After the session ends:
- Tokens are invalidated
- App access is cleared
- No persistent memory or ongoing permission is retained
This keeps things safe and scoped.
No Background Actions Without Consent
Even once an integration is active, the agent still narrates all actions and asks for your confirmation before doing anything sensitive — like sending emails, modifying documents, or submitting forms.
So, even if you’ve connected Gmail, it won’t just send something unless you explicitly say “yes.”
Summary
If you’re creating a Custom GPT, you don’t need to preprogram credentials. Instead, the GPT will prompt users to connect services when needed, using OpenAI’s secure authorization system.
Final Thoughts
Agent Mode turns ChatGPT into more than a conversational tool—it becomes a digital operator capable of executing meaningful work across multiple systems. Whether you’re automating your weekly reports, generating presentations, or planning your week, the agent allows you to offload complex, time-consuming tasks while retaining full control.
For the most powerful and repeatable experience, building your own Custom GPTs is the way to go. But even with basic instructions and manual activation, Agent Mode can transform how you work with AI—saving time, reducing repetition, and increasing the quality of your outputs.
If you’re ready to build your first custom workflow or prompt, start by identifying a task you repeat often, and let ChatGPT do the rest.
