What is OpenAI ChatGPT Agent? How to Use, Capabilities, and Benchmark

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent is an advanced AI assistant that can perform real, multi-step tasks on your behalf. 

Launched on July 17, 2025, it combines earlier tools—Operator and Deep Research—into a single system that utilises a virtual browser, code interpreter, API access, and connectors such as Gmail or GitHub. 

Developed by OpenAI, it was built to go beyond chatting, enabling deeper research, form-filling, downloading files, and creating presentations. It was launched to make AI a hands-on helper, managing both simple and complex tasks. 

In internal benchmarks, it scored 41.6% on Humanity’s Last Exam and 27.4% on FrontierMath, outperforming past agent versions. It also achieved a record-breaking 68.9% on BrowseComp, showing top-tier web navigation skills. 

What makes it special? The seamless integration of browsing, coding, document work, and user oversight marks a new era of AI that not only speaks but also acts.

How to Use ChatGPT Agent: Step-by-Step Guide

Using ChatGPT Agent is simple and intuitive. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use OpenAI’s newly launched ChatGPT Agent:

Who Can Use It?

• Available to Pro, Plus, and Team users on ChatGPT
• Rolling out soon to Enterprise and Education subscribers
• Not yet available in the EEA and Switzerland, but planned

Activating Agent Mode

• Open ChatGPT in your account.
• From the Tools dropdown, select Agent Mode or type /agent.

Running Tasks

• Describe your goal, e.g., “Plan a trip to Delhi and book hotels.”
• The Agent will:
  • Browse websites
  • Interact with pages and APIs
  • Pause for approvals (like logins, purchases)
  • You can interrupt, refine instructions, or take over at any time.

Task Management

• Tasks typically finish in 5–30 minutes.
• You can set tasks to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly.
• All outputs show cited sources or screenshots for verification

Key Capabilities of ChatGPT Agent

ChatGPT Agent combines multiple powerful tools into a seamless, single assistant. It includes a visual browser and text browser, enabling it to navigate websites as a human would, extract information, and follow complex links. 

A built-in terminal and code interpreter let it run scripts, crunch numbers, and process data automatically. It also supports API connectors and integrations with services like Gmail, Google Drive, and GitHub, enabling it to fetch emails, manage documents, and handle code repositories.

The agent can handle real-world tasks end-to-end, including booking appointments, filling out forms, creating slide decks, updating spreadsheets, shopping online, and even modelling financial data. All of this happens in a unified virtual environment where it retains context and state across different tools. 

Enhanced safety features—such as secure “watch mode,” prompt-injection resistance, explicit permission for sensitive operations, and refusal training—help ensure user control and prevent misuse.

Together, these capabilities set the agent apart from regular ChatGPT. Instead of offering advice or generating text, it acts for you—navigating the web, performing data analysis, editing files, and directly completing tasks, all while you remain in charge and informed.

Performance Benchmarks and What Sets It Apart

ChatGPT Agent excels in rigorous benchmarks that test reasoning, math, browsing, and data analysis. 

In Humanity’s Last Exam (HLE)—a challenging set of 2,500 expert-level questions—it achieved a 41.6% pass rate, an improvement over earlier tools, and even reached 44.4% with parallel trial strategies. 

On FrontierMath, a notoriously difficult math benchmark, the agent scored 27.4%—a significant leap, driven by its ability to use code execution tools.

In web-based benchmarks, it also stood out: BrowseComp, which tests persistence and creativity in web navigation, yielded a 68.9% success rate, surpassing prior versions by 17 percentage points.

In SpreadsheetBench, evaluating business spreadsheet tasks, it achieved 45.5%, more than double the performance of Microsoft Excel Copilot. 

For investment banking modelling tests, internal stats suggested it outperformed both Deep Research mode and the older o3 tool. Moreover, on DSBench, a data science workflow benchmark, it exceeded human performance by a notable margin.

These results show that ChatGPT Agent is not just a conversational model—it’s a goal-driven assistant that reasons, codes, researches, and acts.

What Makes It Stand Out

• Unified system combining browsing, research, code, and document creation
• Autonomous task execution: switches between reasoning and action fluidly
• Safety-first architecture: avoids unintended real-world consequences
• Benchmark dominance demonstrates a technical edge in comprehension, mathematics, data analysis, and web browsing.

Conclusion

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent, launched July 17, 2025, marks a breakthrough in AI. It unites browsing, code, and tool usage into one system that can carry out real-world tasks. It always seeks user approval for important actions, offering a safer, more automated experience. 

While still in beta and not flawless—requiring human oversight, especially for high-stakes tasks—it excels at managing schedules, creating presentations, and handling web interactions efficiently. 

This marks a shift from AI assistants that just inform to those that act on your behalf. As it continues improving, it shows confidence, not just talk—now it’s doing.