Can my ChatGPT plugin message people first?

Can my ChatGPT plugin tell people when something changes, like a restock?

Your plugin can do this with plugin events, but almost no one uses them yet. Only 49 of the 7,403 ranked plugins in ChatGPT declare an event. Netlify is the only one in the top 100, and no retailer, airline or restaurant brand has shipped one.

Some context: OpenAI shipped plugin events at DevDay on September 29, 2026. They can reach people as a push notification on their phone, and OpenAI says a plugin's rank depends partly on retention. The catch is that events only work in Work chats for paying users today.

What do MCP events look like in ChatGPT today?

In ChatGPT, subscribing to an MCP event creates a scheduled task. When your MCP connector sends an event, the scheduled task notifies the user about the status update.

We tried it with Netlify on October 21, 2026. We asked ChatGPT to tell us when a deploy of our site succeeded, and it set up a task that watches for Netlify's deploy.succeeded event:

The task sits in ChatGPT's Scheduled page next to reminders, with Netlify as its trigger and our request as its instructions:

The task runs on ChatGPT's cloud, not on your computer. When we ran the same test in the ChatGPT desktop app with the task set to run locally, it did not work. When we deployed the site with the cloud task, ChatGPT sent a push notification to the phone:

The most interesting part of this is that it lets you notify users through the ChatGPT app directly, keeping them engaged with your product and your connector.

A few of the MCP servers that say they support MCP events caused errors in practice, so expect a few rough edges while the feature is new.

What could events look like for my brand?

Here's what this could look like for a running brand (the event name is made up):

Who uses events so far?

Mostly young apps from small teams that sell to businesses and developers. The 49 plugins declare 275 event types between them: 21 declare a single event, and Inkbox, an inbox for AI agents, declares 45. Only 10 of the 49 are consumer apps (20%), against 41% of all ranked ChatGPT plugins.

Shopping is the starkest case. Of 289 shopping plugins in ChatGPT, one declares an event, and it isn't a store. Product Information API tracks Amazon listings, and its one event fires when availability changes: our restock example, built by a third party watching Amazon.

Which events have plugins declared?

Here is every one: 285 event types from 54 plugins, sorted by ChatGPT rank. Five of the plugins joined the directory this week and are not ranked yet.

Who will see my plugin's events today?

Only paying users in Work chats, even though the DevDay recap says "Available to all plans." OpenAI's help article on scheduled tasks says "Free and Go accounts cannot create event-triggered tasks."

Event-triggered tasks can run at most 30 times an hour and 720 times a day per user, shared across every plugin they subscribe to. Actions that need approval pause the task, so a purchase waits for the shopper's tap. The task must also run in ChatGPT's cloud, because it has to be ready whenever an event arrives.

How do MCP events work under the hood?

OpenAI's MCP Events docs say events let "ChatGPT subscribe to updates from your MCP server, such as new messages, content updates, or status changes." The plugin decides which events it offers, and the user decides what ChatGPT does when one arrives.

Your server adds events/list, events/subscribe and events/unsubscribe. When a user subscribes, ChatGPT gives your server a callback URL, and your server sends each matching event there as a signed webhook. No model sits waiting: each event starts one run of the user's task, with the event and the user's instructions.

So, what should you do?

Add one event now. The build is small next to the plugin itself, the competition is close to zero, and the brands that are ready when events reach regular chats will have a head start. A brand like Nike, whose Running Shoe Finder already runs in ChatGPT, is one event away from the restock example above.

Pick the event a customer would ask for by name. It should happen rarely and end in a purchase or booking. For most consumer brands, that is a back-in-stock or waitlist alert.

Put the alert button in your UI. Ask for the subscription at the moment people care, for example with a "Get alerts for this search" button next to your plugin's results.

Methodology

We read ChatGPT's plugin directory every day, including each plugin's mcp_events list. All numbers here are from October 21, 2026, and count the 7,403 apps with a ChatGPT rank. Audience and category labels are our own. More on our methodology page.