What can my brand learn from Nike's ChatGPT plugin?

What should my brand's ChatGPT plugin look like?

Look at Nike's Running Shoe Finder. It does one job, picking a running shoe, and it does it beautifully: a full-screen quiz with a distance dial, a terrain slider over trail photography, and a shoe page that looks like it came straight off nike.com.

Some context: most plugins still look like a list of search results in a chat. Nike's feels like a product a brand team designed on purpose. It ranks #1,959 of 7,433 places in ChatGPT's directory, and it is climbing.

What does Nike's plugin do?

It asks about your running and recommends one Nike running shoe. Type "find me the right running shoes" and a "Runner's Pick" card opens in the chat. The quiz asks your distance (1 mile up to ultra), your terrain (from "smooth & Chill" to "steep & Gnarly") and how you want the shoe to feel, then shows a shoe page with a Buy with Nike button.

• Craft. Custom type, motion on every control and photography chosen for each question. On a phone it runs full screen and feels like a native Nike app.
• A focused job. One tool, one task. The tool description says "Do NOT invoke for basketball, lifestyle, training, soccer, or other non-running shoe requests."
• No sign-in. Anyone can try it in one step.
• Respect for privacy. The tool tells ChatGPT not to fill in your size, terrain or other answers from memory or earlier chats. Your shoe size from six months ago shouldn't silently shape today's pick.

Is it working?

So far, yes. Nike is #1,959, up from #2,146 on October 8, and it has gained places almost every day since. That puts it in the top 26% of the directory. Bigger shopping brands still rank higher: Walmart is #212, Target #558 and Sephora #1,173, and 90 of 289 shopping plugins rank above Nike.

Nike is new, and a running shoe is an occasional purchase, so it won't retain users like a grocery plugin. For a fairer comparison, Ulta Beauty arrived the same week and ranks #4,127.

So, what should you do?

Pick one job and do it beautifully. Nike didn't put its whole catalog in ChatGPT. It took the question a store employee hears every day, "which shoe should I run in?", and built the best possible answer to it.

Let the chat bring context in. Nike's tool takes 12 optional fields (shoe size, terrain, race distance and more), so ChatGPT can pass along what you already said instead of asking again.

Draw a clear line on memory. Say in your tool description what the model may and may not reuse from earlier chats. That kind of care makes people trust a brand inside an assistant.

Check your category. ChatGPT files Nike's plugin under "Business & Operations," where runners won't look for it. Make sure yours sits where your customers browse.

Methodology

We read ChatGPT's plugin directory every day, including each plugin's tools and input fields. Ranks are from October 20, 2026, and the tool text is quoted from Nike's published tool definition. We can see what a server declares, not what its widget does at runtime. More on our methodology page.