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OpenAI's dots can book a table. Can it book with you?

By Surfing Dog ·

At its developer conference on 29 September, OpenAI introduced dots. They’re always-on agents that live in ChatGPT and run on a computer of their own. A dot works across thousands of apps through ChatGPT, using the ones its person has connected, and it gets on with things in the background. It only comes back to its person when something needs them.

OpenAI’s first example is a simple one: book a table. The first dot comes with ChatGPT’s Pro and Business Premium plans.

What happens when someone says “book us somewhere for Friday”

The dot searches, compares and then has to finish the job. That means a time, a price and a yes. It works through an app when one fits, and through its own browser when one doesn’t.

Picture three restaurants on the same street.

  • The first has no prices online. The dot would have to ask, so it moves on.
  • The second takes bookings by phone, or through a form that sends an email and promises a call back. The dot can’t get a yes tonight.
  • The third shows its free tables for Friday and books one when asked. The dot books there and tells its person it’s done.

That’s how a small business loses a customer it never knew it had. Nobody called and nobody complained. The booking just went next door.

What a dot can use

  • Your services and prices, written down. “Price on request” is a dead end for an agent.
  • Real free times. A live answer to “is Friday at 8 free?”
  • A door it can use. Either an app it can call, or a page its browser can fill in that answers straight away.
  • A clear answer. Yes, no, or another time, never “we’ll get back to you”.
  • The person’s say on anything priced. A dot comes back to its person when something needs their review, and your side should leave room for that.

How Surfing Dog Inbox gives it both doors

Surfing Dog Inbox is an open-source inbox that runs on your own domain, like inbox.yourrestaurant.com.

  • An MCP server, the standard way AI assistants plug into a service. ChatGPT connects to MCP servers, so a person can add your inbox in ChatGPT and book, ask for a quote or order through it. OpenAI hasn’t said yet which of those connections a dot can use on its own, so your inbox offers a second door as well.
  • Your own page at the same address, where a person, or an agent using its browser, can book a time, ask for a quote or send a message and get an answer on the spot. See your page.

Both doors answer from your rules. A table for four can confirm itself when there’s room and you’re open. A party of twenty waits for you under Needs you. A priced booking or order binds nobody until the person has confirmed its summary, which suits an agent built to check in with its person.

In the UK and Europe

OpenAI says dots won’t reach Pro subscribers in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the UK for now, and hasn’t said when that will change. Business Premium includes dots in every region ChatGPT supports.

A business in Lisbon, Dublin or Barcelona should still be ready. Visitors from the US bring their dots with them, and the assistants your local customers already use (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok) connect to your inbox today.

Try it

Ask your AI to book a service at our demo bike workshop: surfingdog.ai/try. It takes about a minute and you don’t need to sign up.

To set up your own, open surfingdog.ai/install and paste the one line there into your AI. The software is free and open source.

Read next: what a personal AI assistant needs from your business, and Muse for Small Business, Meta’s agent that launched the same day.