On October 15, OpenAI rewired its ChatGPT Chrome extension so the assistant can read across a user’s open tabs and, in a separate mode, take direct control of them. The Chrome Web Store lists 7,000,000 users on the extension, which means computer-use capability just rolled quietly into the daily workflow of millions of people already signed into their work accounts.

The split matters. Chat mode views tabs; Work mode acts on them, sending messages, filling forms, downloading files, and organizing or grouping tabs on command. GPT-6 Astra is positioned as the computer-use model behind it, and the updated extension is available across all ChatGPT plans. OpenAI’s documentation names LinkedIn, Salesforce, Gmail, and internal tools as example sites the agent can read or act on when the user is already signed in. The company says ChatGPT asks before interacting with each new site and lets users set per-site allow or deny rules.

Read the sample prompts OpenAI shipped and the product’s intent becomes obvious. They include comparing pricing pages against stated requirements, moving vendors from open tabs into a comparison sheet with pricing, key features, and source links, and comparing contractor services across tabs before drafting an email to the chosen one. The demo compares three sofa listings open side by side. This isn’t a general-purpose browser toy. It’s a vendor-evaluation machine.

Which is the part a five-to-thirty-person company should sit with.

The buyer researching your business tomorrow isn’t reading your site. An agent is. It’s parsing your pricing page, dropping your feature list into a comparison sheet, and drafting the inquiry email before the human reviews it. Machine-legible pricing, structured feature copy, and a working contact form stop being hygiene and start being distribution. This is the same structural shift covered in how ChatGPT is becoming a place small businesses can get discovered, now extended from discovery into the evaluation step itself.

The loop runs both ways. Owners get a prospecting tool that reads LinkedIn and Gmail across the tabs they already have open, which arrives weeks after OpenAI launched its always-on Dots agents. The research journey is collapsing into the browser. Whoever’s site reads cleanest to the agent wins the shortlist.

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