What is ChatGPT agent mode? (And what replaced it)
Agent mode was the ChatGPT setting that browsed and clicked through websites for you. OpenAI switched it off in August 2026 and pointed people at ChatGPT Work instead. Work reads public pages and writes documents, but it will not sign into a site for you or hand the keyboard back partway through a task.
What agent mode did
ChatGPT agent mode gave the assistant its own computer in the cloud, with a real browser it clicked through the way a person would. You typed a task in ordinary English, something like "compare these five suppliers and put their prices in a spreadsheet," and it opened tabs, filled in forms, and handed back a file. OpenAI launched it in July 2025. A $20 Plus account got 40 of those tasks a month; a $200 Pro account got 400.
Why it vanished from the menu
The Agent entry started disappearing for paying customers around July 8, 2026. People spent weeks treating it as a glitch: clearing caches, reinstalling the app, even narrowing the browser window to force the menu open. It was being switched off on purpose. By early August the help page said agent mode was no longer available and sent everyone to ChatGPT Work, with no warning period and no migration guide. Anything sitting at chatgpt.com/schedules that called agent mode simply stops running.
What replaces it, and what does not
Work covers the reading half: public pages, files, finished documents. The half it does not cover is the half most people were relying on. Agent mode stopped at a login screen, gave you the keyboard so you could sign in yourself, then picked the task back up. Work cannot do that. OpenAI also shut its Atlas browser on August 9, 2026 and says logged-in browsing will return through the ChatGPT desktop app. So: if your task was look-things-up-and-report, move it to Work and lose nothing. If it needed a sign-in or your approval partway through, rebuild it somewhere you set the stopping points yourself.
Last updated: Aug 28, 2026