How to use a ChatGPT Dot's cloud computer: take over, sign-ins, Blender renders and 50 real uses (OpenAI Dots, Oct 2026)

The short version: what the cloud computer is good for, how to set it up, where it gets stuck

Every ChatGPT Dot (OpenAI Dots) gets its own Linux cloud computer with a browser, files and a shell, and it keeps working there when your laptop is closed (Introducing dots). This section sums up what owners learned on that machine; the named cases and full reports follow below. If you are new, set up the Dot first with getting started. For how the cloud computer sits next to plugins and channels, see features.

Is it worth using?

Yes, for work that needs a machine but not your own files: installing a tool and using it straight away, renders and document runs that take hours or days, writing and testing code, and browsing with logins you give it. Jobs keep going with your laptop switched off, and several can run at once. It is not yet a safe place to keep things. Recent files, installed apps and browser sessions have disappeared for several owners, so treat it as a workbench and keep finished work somewhere else. Work that needs your own files, a GPU, root access or a Mac belongs on your connected computer or elsewhere.

How to set it up

1. Find the machine. Open the Dot's profile and look under Computers, or select Open computer when the Dot hands you a browser step (Computers and apps).
2. Watch first, take over only when you need to. Opening the computer only lets you watch. Select Take over for the mouse and keyboard, then Return control so the Dot can carry on.
3. Sign it in on its own browser. Signing in on your laptop does not sign the Dot in. Use the private sign-in form it sends, or sign in yourself in takeover. Save to Passwords is optional, and reusing a saved login needs your confirmation, but a session that is still valid keeps working until you sign out or the site ends it.
4. Let it install what it needs, and ask for a list. Owners put Whisper, Chrome, the LINE app and other command-line agents on it, and had it upgrade Blender. Ask it to keep a short setup script of everything it installed, so it can rebuild after the machine is replaced.
5. Give long jobs a finish line and checkpoints. Say what "done" looks like, then have it save each milestone to Library or a connected drive and push code to a remote repository. A commit that exists only on the cloud computer is not a backup.
6. Connect your own computer only for jobs that need its files. In the ChatGPT app on that computer, open the Dot's profile, find Your computer under Computers and select Allow access. You can connect one personal computer at a time, it has to stay online with the app open, and an Offline status does not remove access; Revoke access does. On a work account, an admin has to turn on local computer access and you need desktop version 26.929 or newer.
7. For coding, give it a Codex cloud environment. The Dot can start separate cloud threads that show up in your desktop, web and mobile apps, and for code it can use a Codex cloud environment you have set up with the repository and its configuration.

Where it gets stuck, and what worked

1. Recent files, apps or logins vanish. leftbankvines, jstrick79 and UTO-mi lost recent work while older files stayed, and Mrchen116 lost a whole shared folder. What held was anything already in Library, outside storage or a pushed repository, plus a restore plan the Dot runs on a schedule (DaisukeDaisuke). Mrchen116 checked the recovered model against its SHA-256 to prove it was intact. A Reboot did not bring a missing folder back for KalGuinn. If you want OpenAI Support to look, stop before restoring over the missing paths.
2. You signed in, but the Dot still can't read the page. Make sure you selected Return control and ask once more; rebooting the Dot cleared it for a while for elon11. If a site blocks the cloud browser, ask the Dot to use your connected computer instead. That runs as a separate local task and does not carry the cloud login over.
3. Pages crash with "Error code 9". Have the Dot load example.com first, which tells a broken site from a broken browser (vijay7237). Clearing the cache, toggling graphics and single-tab restarts didn't help kairytwo2 or moneywithjakee. When every page crashes, pause the job and wait: yaojiangyyyy's browser recovered on its own twice in one afternoon.
4. Takeover lags, freezes or won't connect. If clicks do nothing in Firefox, use a Chromium-based browser (wlzglfyi). If the desktop view lags or the picture freezes, take over from the ChatGPT phone app (lance.wilhelm, deluan). If the viewer won't open, ask the Dot to list its windows and tabs; if it can, the machine is running and only your view is stuck, so don't reset anything (verg1l0).
5. Sessions end after a long gap. Even with an hourly keep-alive, every one of NLorenzoD's tabs was gone overnight and Outlook asked for a login again. Expect a sign-in request when a job resumes after hours away.
6. No sudo, no TUN device, no GPU. A standard Tailscale install fails, while the user-level dots-tailscale setup kept in /workspace works if you restart it after each replacement. A command the Dot hands you can still fail on the network, because your own terminal doesn't get the Dot's proxy settings (discko); tell the Dot instead of retrying.
7. Passwords and API keys. There is no built-in place to hand the Dot a secret, and chebyte's Dot refused one pasted into chat. The route that worked is signing in yourself through takeover.
8. Your Windows PC fails with "MXC launcher… HRESULT 0x80070003". The same step works in a separate local Work chat (frkgldn, BuildLocalLab, Liri). Support told BuildLocalLab not to change sandbox or security settings and that reinstalling wouldn't help, so paste the full error into your ticket and say that Work still works.
9. Small frictions. The timezone stays wherever you were when the Dot started, so name the one you want (jasonpvasquez). Text copied on its desktop doesn't paste into your chat, so ask for it in a reply or a file (HeyItWorked). The Android app greys out ZIP and Excel files, so hand those over from a connected computer (KaienMin).

What it can do, and what it can't yet

It can:

• install and run the tools a job needs, including other command-line agents such as Grok CLI and Claude Code
• keep a render, a multi-day document review or a three-day maths run going while your laptop is off
• write an app, test it and fix what fails on its own machine
• browse with its own logins, from a test wallet to about 600 X bookmarks
• work on its cloud computer and your connected computer at the same time, one task on each

It can't yet:

• promise that files, installed apps or logins will still be there next time
• run anything that needs a GPU, sudo, a TUN device or Docker
• take a password or API key from you directly
• keep a timezone you choose, or copy text from its desktop to your clipboard
• build iOS apps, because there is no Mac cloud machine

One message to start with

I want you to use your cloud computer for [job]. Before you start, tell me which tools you will install, which logins the job needs and whether you already have them in your own browser, and what "done" will look like. While you work, save each finished piece to Library [or my drive], push code to [remote repo], keep a list of everything you installed, and note a SHA-256 for each finished file. At the start of each session, check that [marker file] still exists; if it's missing, stop and tell me the time in UTC before you restore anything. If a site keeps crashing, or you can't read it after I sign in, stop and send me the exact error instead of retrying. Don't ask me to paste a password or key into this chat.

Quick answers

What is a ChatGPT Dot's cloud computer?

A Linux machine of the Dot's own, with a browser, files and a shell, that keeps working while your devices are off (Computers and apps). Owners who had their Dot inspect it got matching answers: George Liu and u/Caprisuner saw about 9 vCPUs (an AMD EPYC 9V74 in u/Caprisuner's check), about 9.7 GB of memory, about 32 GB of storage and no GPU, and Kyle of KodeLab found Python 3.12, Node.js 24, GCC and OpenJDK 21 installed. Blender comes preinstalled, as @maddiedreese heard at DevDay. These are owners' readings, not an official spec.

How do I open it, or take over?

Open the Dot's profile and look under Computers, or select Open computer when the Dot hands you a browser step. Opening it only lets you watch; select Take over for the mouse and keyboard, then Return control when you're done. If takeover lags or freezes on a desktop, try the ChatGPT phone app, which worked for lance.wilhelm and deluan. If your clicks do nothing in Firefox, try a Chromium-based browser, as wlzglfyi found.

What can it do while I'm away?

Long jobs are where it shines. Richard M.'s Dot built a watch model in Blender while he was at the gym, @boombignose shut down his MacBook and came back to a finished render, and keno's Dot spent three hours rendering itself. u/dry_towelette99's review of hundreds of PDFs ran for several days, and u/jaxchang's seven agents worked on a maths problem for three days. More Blender work is on video & animation.

Can it sign in to websites?

Yes, with its own logins: signing in on your laptop doesn't sign the Dot in. It sends you a private sign-in form, or you sign in yourself in takeover. @3weeksbuilding logged into X in the Dot's browser and had it rank about 600 bookmarks. It doesn't always hold: aunysillyme and Carrazza signed in by hand and the Dot still couldn't read the page, NLorenzoD found every open tab gone overnight, and chebyte found no good way to hand over a secret.

Do files and installed apps stay?

OpenAI's guide says the machine can keep its state between periods of use, but not for how long. wschenkai found an installed WeChat gone, and between 6 and 14 October leftbankvines, jstrick79 and UTO-mi lost recent work while older files stayed. What survived was what had been saved to Library or outside storage, or pushed to a remote repository; DaisukeDaisuke's Dot even restores its own setup on a schedule. A checkpoint routine you can copy is further down this page.

Should I use the cloud computer or connect my own?

Use the cloud for installs, renders, downloads and long runs. Connect your own computer when the job needs its files, as @olivece2017 did to sort 1,545 downloads and Creer did for two live projects. You connect one personal computer at a time from the ChatGPT desktop app, and it has to stay online with the app open. The Dot can then read what's on it, which surprised Onur Tirpan. On Windows, frkgldn, BuildLocalLab and Liri found the Dot's path failing with MXC 0x80070003 while a normal chat worked. For other connection errors, see Dots not showing or not working.

What can't it do yet?

It has no sudo and no TUN device, so a standard Tailscale install failed for 东邪西毒 (@Ykklawyer) and LZHL, although a user-level setup, dots-tailscale, has been made to work. It has no GPU, Docker wouldn't run for sebastian73 (case 32 on building apps & sites), and KaienMin couldn't pick ZIP or Excel files in the Android app.

Which plan do I need?

A Dot, and its cloud computer, comes with Pro ($100, $200 or $500 tiers) outside the EEA, UK and Switzerland, with Business Premium in any supported region, and with Enterprise once an admin switches it on (How to get ChatGPT Dots). If you're in Europe on a personal plan, read Dots in the EU and UK first. How the cloud computer sits next to plugins, channels and calls is on the features page. For what people built on it, see building apps & sites, and for repository work, Dots + GitHub.

What users found inside the machine

These are the owners' own reports, not an official spec, and they may change.

• George Liu (1 Oct 2026) asked his Dot about its computer. It answered: x86-64, 9 vCPUs, 9.7 GiB memory, a 32 GB workspace filesystem, Linux kernel 6.18.44, Python 3.12, Node.js 24, and Git.
• u/Caprisuner (30 Sep 2026) had the Dot inspect its own environment and got a matching picture: 9 logical CPUs on an AMD EPYC 9V74, about 9.7 GB RAM, about 31 GB storage, and no GPU. The same environment ran Python, SQLite, and shell commands, so it is not a Blender-only sandbox. As they point out, this is the machine the Dot works on, not the one running the model.
• @maddiedreese (29 Sep 2026) heard at the DevDay closing Q&A that the machine comes with apps such as Blender preinstalled, then asked her Dot to list every preloaded app and tool. It returned the list as a screenshot.
• Ishan Sharma (29 Sep 2026) summed up the machine as about 9 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage with a browser, terminal, and file system, and showed a screen recording of asking the Dot to download apps and keep files there.
• Leon van Zyl (2 Oct 2026) set up a Dot named Luna from scratch, then opened Luna's cloud computer on camera to look around before asking her to build a 3D version of herself in Blender on it.
• Adrian Murray (@adriancmurray) (1 Oct 2026) found the 3D tools already installed and had the Dot, Anuki, upgrade the Blender install on its own computer before it kept iterating on its own 3D body there.
• Kyle, KodeLab (30 Sep 2026, in Traditional Chinese) ran Bash checks on a Pro 100 Dot and found the same 9 logical CPUs and about 9.7 GiB of memory (about 8.0 GiB available), plus about 32 GiB of working disk with about 29 GiB free and no swap. /tmp is a memory-backed space capped at about 4.9 GiB, so files there use RAM rather than adding disk space. Installed were Python 3.12.14, Node.js 24.19.0 with npm 11.9.0, GCC/G++ 14.2.0, Bash 5.2.37, and OpenJDK 21, which could run Java programs but had no javac compiler. A test program that kept asking for more memory was only stopped after passing 8 GB. Kyle also compared it with ChatGPT Work: a follow-up Work task once replied that its earlier computer environment was gone and it had to start over, while the Dot's computer kept its files and working state through a full day of use. How long it keeps them beyond that, Kyle couldn't say. The notes app Kyle built is case 26 on build apps and sites.

1. It installs the tool it needs, then does the job

Transcribing a student's video before reviewing the code (Antonio Leiva)

Teacher and developer Antonio Leiva (29 Sep 2026, in Spanish) wanted a first review of a student's course project, which included a video. He asked his Dot, Keet, to install Whisper on its own machine. Keet transcribed the video, checked the repository through the GitHub connector, and left him a first-pass review, so he no longer started from zero. More teaching cases are on teachers & students.

Moving a code review off the laptop (余佳恆, @tachichocolate)

Developer 余佳恆 (30 Sep 2026, in Chinese) gave his Dot a pull request to review (#473 in his own repo). The local run stalled because it needed his Mac to be authorized, and he did not want that. The Dot switched to its cloud computer, confirmed that Git, Python, and Node were available there, and prepared a separate cloud workspace to check the PR against the main branch, with no Mac involved (Made with Dots summary).

Queuing heavy tests so projects do not fight over the machine (@tachichocolate)

A few days later the same developer (3 Oct 2026) described a morning with one task on his Mac's Codex and six tasks on the Dot's side. Commands such as pnpm tests or builds use the cloud computer's own hardware, so his Dot told him it would put heavy jobs in a queue instead of running every project at once. He also got a native Linux GUI app running on the Dot's desktop without turning off the sandbox.

Chat apps that have no API (Ryuichi, @ryuichi_think; wschenkai)

Ryuichi (@ryuichi_think) (4 Oct 2026, in Japanese), who writes about using AI to make work more efficient, installed Chrome and the regular LINE app, not LINE Official Account, inside his Dot's computer to see whether it could operate them. It could. His verdict: regular automatic replies look hard to run this way, but having the Dot read customer conversations and turn them into meeting notes looks workable. The business account can be connected through LINE's API; the personal app cannot, and a computer in the cloud is what made it possible (Made with Dots summary).

The installed app does not always stay put. wschenkai (1 Oct 2026, OpenAI Community) had WeChat installed on the Dot's cloud computer and found it gone on returning. WhatsApp Web asked for a fresh login and the environment looked different. The post could not tell whether the machine had been replaced or a session had simply expired, and asked what to expect for files, installed apps and logins; the thread closed after 24 hours without an answer. If a setup matters, ask the Dot to keep a note of what it installed so it can rebuild it.

Other command-line agents, installed and called from the Dot

• AI超元域 (@win4r) (30 Sep 2026, in Chinese) had the Dot install Grok CLI on its cloud computer and call it to build a simple login-page demo.
• ぱぱこいん (@papacoin_8851) (Oct 2026, in Japanese) saw a method on X, asked the Dot to call Claude Code through the command line, and it worked on the first try. The point of the post: the work now runs in one flow, whichever company makes the tool.
• Aria (@ariapramesi) (2 Oct 2026) gave the Dot the Antigravity CLI so it would have a faster option for mechanical tasks. Handing Codex work from the Dot is covered on Dots with Codex.
• Mat Windle (@Maticated) (14 Oct 2026) told his Dot to add a computer-use command-line tool to its machine, and it started using it straight away. He says his Dot can now do full computer use and that it built his entire site by itself. His advice to people who doubt it: tell your Dot what you want it to do.

2. Long jobs that finish while you are away

A watch model in Blender during a workout (Richard M.)

Richard M. (30 Sep 2026), on a Pro plan, sent his Dot iZZi a photo of a watch he had designed and went to the gym. On its own computer, iZZi built an editable 3D model with animated hands in Blender, sent several renders, and packaged the Blender file and sources as ZIP downloads. Progress updates arrived in the chat while he was working out (Made with Dots summary).

A render with the laptop switched off (Vittawat Sootawee, @boombignose)

Thai creator @boombignose (5 Oct 2026) asked his Dot to render a 3D panda in Blender, shut down his MacBook Pro, and came back later to check the finished render. His point for office users: hand over the work, then come back to check the result (Made with Dots summary).

A first 3D draft while the owner sleeps (Mogu, @mogu_ai_atelier)

Mogu (4 Oct 2026, in Chinese) found Blender on the Dot's machine, and handed it a teddy-bear character to model. The Dot produced a first gray mesh with round ears, separate limbs, a backpack, and a lantern. Mogu's advice: give it the job and go to sleep. Mogu kept the job on the cloud computer only, and noted that usage still depends on the task.

Hundreds of PDFs over several days (u/dry_towelette99)

u/dry_towelette99 (1 Oct 2026) gave their Dot a document review covering hundreds of PDFs and thousands of pages. It ran on the Dot's cloud computer and turned into a multi-day job, and the Dot kept its place, took side questions, and carried on without the task being explained again. While a separate task was running on their connected Linux machine, the Dot confirmed both were active at the same time, one on each computer.

Full engineering packages, checked by a human (u/DarthSilent)

u/DarthSilent (6 Oct 2026) gives one Dot a large engineering task, answers a few clarifying questions, and lets it work on its cloud computer for the rest of the day. The Dot builds CAD models, runs strength and thermal calculations, changes the design when the numbers fail, and writes the BOM and assembly documents. One package had more than 1,000 unique components and almost 300 pages of drawings. Some parts were cut on the owner's laser cutter from the Dot's program and came out fine. The owner estimates about 1.6 billion tokens a day, and says none of it would go to manufacturing without human engineering review. Queued work comes from a task document in Google Drive.

Seven agents on a maths problem for three days (u/jaxchang)

u/jaxchang wrote up the run on Substack (5 Oct 2026). From 1 to 3 October, seven agents (the main Dot plus six sub-agents) worked on the Dot's machine, which the author describes as 9 AMD EPYC cores, 10 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage, on a covering-design problem. Each agent had a role: research, Lean formalization, computational search, adversarial review, or coordination. Searches under five minutes could run without asking; bigger ones needed a better plan first. Later the author moved to a shared task pool, where the main Dot checked each new task's scope, dependencies and priority before another agent could claim it, and no result counted until a different agent and a Lean build had checked it.

The swarm proved that 19 blocks of size 14 cannot cover every 4-element subset of 24 points, raising the lower bound C(24,14,4) from 19 to 20, and C(25,15,5) from 32 to 34. The Lean proof is 80 files and about 8,800 lines and passed the Palomar registry's mechanical checks; the author says it is not peer reviewed yet and is with mathematicians at the Covering Repository. Partway through, the agents' shared workspace disappeared, and they rebuilt the missing files from what survived and from their own messages. The author's lessons: agents are good at grinding and bad at knowing when to stop, and verification is the whole game.

3. Writing, testing and fixing code on its machine

An app written, tested and fixed over a coffee break (Anas Tecnología)

Spanish tech creator Anas Tecnología (1 Oct 2026, in Spanish) gave a Dot its own computer for an afternoon and went for a coffee. On returning, it had written an app, tested it, and fixed three bugs on its own. Four tests followed on camera: programming unsupervised, two jobs at once, learning from corrections, and a last one that tried to push it past what it should do.

A Godot game and a Blender model, built in parallel (AI超元域, @win4r)

In a Chinese deep test, AI超元域 (30 Sep 2026) had the Dot build a Godot snake game and a Blender model of Stonehenge at the same time on its cloud computer. The source code came back, the game was played by hand, and the model files and renders were checked. The same video has a voice workflow that found old notes in Notion, searched papers, and wrote the result back to Notion. The video says plainly that the demos were simple and that the scheduled-task part only showed the setup.

A game prototype on the cloud PC (入江慎吾, Shingo Irie)

Indie developer Shingo Irie (30 Sep 2026, in Japanese), who has shipped more than 40 web services and apps, walked through what the Dot's cloud PC can do and had it attempt a game prototype with Godot and Blender, alongside the notifications it sent without being asked.

More finished apps, sites and games are on building apps & sites.

4. Its own browser, logins and accounts

Chrome on the cloud PC, Codex on the Mac (Takuya, @takuya_genai)

AI engineer Takuya (2 Oct 2026, in Japanese, Pro) gave his Dot a goal and how far it could go. It opened Chrome on its own cloud PC, read the pages, and sent back the key points. When he asked it to check a folder on his connected Mac, the Dot handed the job to Codex itself, which finished in 20 seconds with a correct answer. He also set a rule that it must ask for approval before sending email.

A test wallet set up in its own browser (calle, @callebtc)

calle (30 Sep 2026) watched a Dot named tod open a Cashu wallet in the browser on its own computer, accept the wallet terms, treat it as a throwaway test wallet, and mint a 100-sat token from the testnut.cashu.space test mint, which has no real value. It then sent the token string back in chat (Made with Dots summary).

Watching it browse while you talk (Dariush Asadi, @ozthropic)

Dariush Asadi (4 Oct 2026, in Persian) asked the Dot to introduce itself, then watched it work through Instagram pages in the browser on its own computer. The best part, in the caption: talking to it while seeing how it moved the work forward.

Its own email address for outgoing mail (Aria, @ariapramesi)

Aria (1 Oct 2026) gave the Dot its own address for outgoing email through send16.com, so it can handle some messages itself without going through the owner's inbox. A day later Aria described the Dot as a project manager, running a modified version of another developer's automation code and keeping a group of websites and their content going.

Signed in to X on its own PC, then 600 bookmarks ranked (@3weeksbuilding)

@3weeksbuilding (13 Oct 2026) answered a question about how their Dot reaches X without paying for the API: they simply logged into Twitter in the browser on the Dot's own PC. In a follow-up, they wrote that they had just had the Dot go through about 600 bookmarks and rank them by what they should act on or read first, and that no problems came up. Another user in the thread asked whether working through the site's interface could run into rate limits or bot detection; for this job, 3weeksbuilding reported none.

5. Drawing and design apps on its desktop

• Dennis (@eekfuh) (29 Sep 2026) asked his Dot to draw a picture of him. As he put it, "It has its own computer and drawing app", and he shared the result as a video and a photo.
• Tibo Sottiaux (@thsottiaux) (30 Sep 2026), who works at OpenAI, asked his Dot to paint him. The first try was cartoonish, so he asked it to try harder and find a recent picture of him online, and the second was better. His video shows him clicking through the Dot's computer.
• Вячеслав Кицун (@viachaslau.kitsun) (2 Oct 2026, in Russian) made covers and icons for his work apps with his Dot, with reviews and redo rounds in between. He notes that the Dot works in its browser, uses apps and writes code in a connected environment, and that connecting repositories still has limits.

More Blender and video work is on video editing & animation.

6. Media and file pipelines

YouTube to Google Drive, then out to channels (주니쌤, @hee_story9)

주니쌤 (1 Oct 2026, in Korean, Pro) told his Dot to upload YouTube videos to Google Drive and post them to channels from Drive, and it did. He notes the Dot keeps running on its cloud computer with his MacBook off, handles parallel requests, and that he still prefers separate named Dots to keep jobs organized (Made with Dots summary).

A batch of music tracks, returned to the local project (Syrcus AI)

Syrcus AI (1 Oct 2026, in Chinese) handed a slow batch of web-based soundtrack production to the Dot so it would stop tying up his own machine. The handoff went through an MCP bridge he built himself, he checked in by phone call, and the finished files came back to his local machine and were filed. The video ends with a hiccup after a Codex update.

7. Opening the machine and driving it yourself

OpenAI's guide calls this Take over: you get the mouse and keyboard, then select Return control when the Dot can continue. People used it like this:

• Carl Taylor (30 Sep 2026), a Sydney business owner who builds AI employees for small businesses, recorded his very first session: setting up the Dot in the desktop app, connecting his Google account and his own computer, calling it, then opening the Dot's computer and taking over its cloud browser. Before he had asked for anything, it had made a scratchpad for itself and started new sessions to split up the work.
• Zuey (@imzuey) (1 Oct 2026, in Vietnamese) connected to his Dot's computer with remote control from the ChatGPT app and used its Linux desktop directly.
• Dmitriy Kovalenko (@neogoose_btw) (2 Oct 2026) runs neovim on the Dot's computer through that same remote control, using it as a remote dev machine.
• Yu-Jen Chen (1 Oct 2026, in Chinese) watched his Dot start a Linux cloud computer and connect his local Mac mini at the same time, then gave it tasks on both by voice and text.
• @DevAdventur3s (6 Oct 2026) wanted to call the Dot and open its computer from anywhere on his Mac, so he built his own floating desktop app for it, with a button to take over the mouse and keyboard.

8. Overnight renders, and a Mac upgrade put on hold

Two owners left a Blender job running overnight and woke up to renders. A third moved his coding jobs off an overloaded Mac instead of buying a new one. A fourth told the Dot to model and render itself in Blender on the cloud machine alone.

39. A pool terrace rendered in Blender overnight (Not Harris, @viewsfrom02108)

Not Harris (X, 10 Oct 2026), who builds apps, posted a three-second clip with one line: "My dot made me this in blender overnight." The frame shows a finished architectural scene: a pool with steps and a ladder, two loungers, olive trees in pots, and a timber screen on the wall behind. He didn't say what he had asked for or how long the render took.

40. First renders of a game's match start, made overnight (Nikita Skai, @harmonishes)

Indie game developer Nikita Skai (Threads, in Russian) had his Dot make the first renders of his game's match-start scene overnight; the image he shared is labelled as a Blender 3D candidate. He was frank about the result: he didn't like all of it, but he now has a base to work from.

41. A A$5,700 Mac upgrade on hold: the Dot coordinates, Codex Cloud does the coding (Ideas That Pay)

The creator behind Ideas That Pay (YouTube, 10 Oct 2026) codes on a Mac Studio with an M1 Max chip and 32 GB of memory. Running several Codex tasks at once kept filling that memory, so he started pricing a Mac Studio M5 Max at about A$5,700. Before buying it, he changed where the work runs: a Dot in ChatGPT coordinates the jobs, and the coding runs in prepared Codex Cloud environments, each task with its own working files. He ran three tests. Several jobs could move at once without his Mac doing the heavy lifting. Every change still came back to him to review, test and combine, and he counts that review time as a real cost. iOS simulator and phone-related work stays on the Mac. The upgrade is on hold for now. He discloses that, as an existing Pro subscriber, he received a one-time grant of 62,500 usage credits for Work and Codex (valued by OpenAI at US$2,500, expiring on 31 December 2026), so his usage costs may be lower than yours. His test before you buy: name what is actually slowing you down, move one representative task to a cloud environment using project data you're allowed to put there, check the result, the total time and the extra cost, and only then decide what still needs a new machine.

44. The Dot modelled and rendered itself in Blender on its own machine (keno, @kenonews)

keno (@kenonews, X, 6 Oct 2026) told his Dot to "create itself in Blender" without using his PC. The Dot spent a full three hours rendering on its cloud computer and, in his words, "pulled it off." He attached a short video of the result. The job stayed on the Dot's machine; his own computer was not part of the render.

9. From a reference image or a floor plan to a Blender model

Two owners gave the Dot something to build from, a generated reference picture or a finished floor plan, and had it model the result in Blender on its own computer.

42. Game assets modelled in Blender from generated reference images (入江慎吾, Shingo Irie)

Shingo Irie (X, in Japanese, 12 Oct 2026), who also built a game prototype on the cloud PC (section 3), now has his Dot make 3D assets for his game in batches. He first makes a reference image with GPT Image, and the Dot then builds the model in Blender; he notes that Godot, Blender and image generation are all available to it. He was struck by the quality. One of the four screenshots he posted puts the provided reference, a painted Japanese corner shop with a tiled roof and a sign reading しおかぜ商店, beside the Dot's model, labelled "3D appearance v4 - GLB reimport": the same shop rebuilt in 3D, down to the awning, the rack of goods out front and the potted plants.

43. An interior proposal: floor plan to Blender model and renders, then a three.js page for the client (33.Shan, @33.shan.design)

Interior designer 33.Shan (Threads, in Traditional Chinese, 11 Oct 2026) opened AutoCAD for the first time in a long while to finish a floor plan, then handed the rest to her Dot: build the 3D model in Blender, align it with the design style, take screenshots from set viewpoints, and make the proposal renders. She later switched the output to an HTML page built with three.js, because it would be easier to send to clients. She says the results were really quite good, and that her usage allowance looks like enough for her so far.

When the cloud browser gets stuck: sign-in loops, Error code 9 crashes and lost state

The cloud browser is where most Dot jobs touch the outside world, so when it stalls, the whole task stalls. Between 2 and 14 October, owners posted detailed reports on the OpenAI Community and GitHub. Here is what they saw, what brought the browser back and what did not. OpenAI's own recovery advice, from Getting started with your dot, is short: complete the Dot's sign-in request (or take over and sign in yourself), select Return control, and if a website blocks the cloud browser, ask the Dot to try your connected computer. That second route runs as a separate local task and does not carry over the cloud browser's session.

Signed in by hand, but the Dot still can't read the page

aunysillyme (5 Oct, macOS desktop app) asked the Dot to watch a page that needs a login. The secure sign-in form timed out after 300 seconds, so they took over, signed in and opened the right page themselves. When they handed back, the Dot still could not read it: every read came back as "credential protection restricts this observation" (credential_observation_restricted). The suggested recoveries failed in turn, first opening a new page, then asking for a manual handoff, and the chain ended with an instruction to stop. Retries 7 minutes apart failed the same way, so the monitoring job never started.

Three people in the same thread had seen it too. elon11 found that rebooting the Dot fixed it for a while, but the block came back at random after later logins. FX7 had hit it three or four times. On 8 October, BD41 could not open the cloud browser at all: it showed as unavailable, so there was nowhere left to sign in.

Carrazza (12 Oct) hit the same wall on a concrete site: the Dot reached a Jewel360 product page, but credential protection blocked the settings screens, so no changes were saved. Taking over to sign in did not clear it; starting a new task signed in for about a minute, then stalled on the same protection.

SatireLord (15 Oct, native macOS app) hit a different wall with Google. In the Dot's cloud Chromium, Google Cloud Console and its Billing page kept showing a generic "Site Unavailable" page from 08:36 to 09:16 UTC, while Google Account sign-in and Google Admin loaded fine in the same browser. After the user confirmed the sign-in and asked the Dot to carry on, Billing still showed the same page, and the Dot handed over that exact tab. When it then tried to look at the open Billing tab, the browser refused: "Cloud browser could not acquire authority to observe page content", the origin approval gate "did not grant access for https://console.cloud.google.com", and "approval request was cancelled". SatireLord notes that the error page carried no Google branding or HTTP status, and that nobody knows who or what cancelled the approval. If a Google console page won't load in the cloud browser, ask the Dot for the exact error text before you sign in again, and check whether a pending approval is waiting for you.

Approval errors on a new tab, then every tab gone overnight

NLorenzoD (12 Oct, macOS app) asked the Dot to open WhatsApp Web in its cloud browser and approved it explicitly. The page never opened. First the Dot got "JavaScript execution did not receive approval"; after a second approval it got "browser security check was unavailable" and "permission request was dismissed before a decision". No approval card or handoff link appeared, and only a blank tab was left. NLorenzoD then ran an hourly test overnight: WhatsApp Web and a work Outlook Web session stayed open, and every hour the Dot re-saved the same unsent draft. The last save went through at 00:01 UTC on 13 October. At the 01:01 UTC check every open tab was gone, Outlook redirected to its login page and WhatsApp Web asked for the QR code again. Keeping a session busy did not keep it alive, so a job that needs a login after a long gap should expect to ask you to sign in again.

Pages crash with "Aw, Snap! Error code 9"

vijay7237 (5 Oct) found a clean way to tell a broken site from a broken browser. They kept Example.com and Wikipedia open as control tabs, then opened Yahoo and Yahoo Mail. Yahoo Mail crashed with Error code 9 while sitting idle, the Yahoo homepage followed, and the OpenAI Help Center crashed as soon as its support chat opened, but the two control tabs stayed healthy. Reloading, going back, opening fresh tabs and closing duplicates did not help.

yaojiangyyyy (6 Oct) logged a full afternoon. Even about:blank showed "Can't open this page", Chromium reported an unexpected shutdown, and at one point the browser was simply gone, with only the desktop left, although the Dot had not closed it. Both times it came back without anyone intervening, around 15:06 UTC and again around 15:32 UTC, the second time about four minutes after a tab crash, and the Dot could then read the community site and finish the report. SanjayShetty (9 Oct) said the browser had been fine until the day before and had become useless, and that the Dot also could not drive the browser on their connected computer. vindeabreu (10 Oct) saw crashes on any website. On 15 October, FireFlyGaming added a narrower symptom in the same thread: public YouTube videos wouldn't play in the cloud browser. The player showed its controls at 0:00, then went black with a loading spinner, and an earlier inspection had found the video empty (readyState 0, 0 × 0 pixels), while YouTube Studio and Gmail loaded fine. Between 12:38 and 12:40 UTC, browser inspection timed out on Page.getFrameTree and Page.getLayoutMetrics. FireFlyGaming couldn't tell whether this shares a cause with the crashes, and asked whether YouTube playback should work there at all.

Two owners tried the usual browser fixes, and none of them worked. kairytwo2 (7 Oct) restarted the whole browser while keeping the profile, and the error stayed. moneywithjakee (9–10 Oct, Chromium 154 on Debian 13) cleared only cached files and kept logins, switched graphics acceleration off and back on, and finally restarted with a single blank tab before opening the failing page. That page still crashed as the only tab open, which rules out "too many tabs" as the cause in that case.

Takeover that won't respond: Firefox clicks, lag, a frozen picture and a viewer that won't connect

wlzglfyi (2 Oct, Fedora Linux) could take over the Dot's computer from Chrome, but in Firefox their clicks had no visible effect. Turning off picture-in-picture did not help. If takeover feels frozen, try a Chromium-based browser before assuming the Dot is broken.

lance.wilhelm (12 Oct) saw the opposite pattern. Take control lagged so badly in the macOS app, and in Chrome, Zen, Arc and Safari on the Mac (browsers on Linux and Windows too), that they effectively couldn't use the Dot's computer, while the same takeover from the ChatGPT mobile apps worked normally. Switching to a phone hotspot, turning off firewalls for *.chatgpt.com and rebooting the Dot didn't help, and they have a support ticket open. If takeover lags on a desktop, try it from the phone app before you rebuild your network setup.

deluan (13 Oct) hit a third pattern. From 11 October the picture in Take control stopped updating, while their clicks and keystrokes still went through; closing and reopening the view refreshed it once, then it froze again. It happened in the ChatGPT desktop app 26.1007.30912 and in Chrome and Safari on an M4 Mac. An older desktop build on an M5 Mac kept working until deluan updated it to the same version, and then it froze there too. The phone app worked on Wi-Fi and on cellular. Rebooting from the Dot's menu restarted the assistant but not the cloud computer: text left unsent in its browser's address bar was still there afterwards.

verg1l0 (14 Oct) couldn't open the viewer at all. The Android app showed "Computer unavailable", then "Unable to connect to computer" with a Retry button, and the web app failed as well. Yet the Dot itself could still list the windows and browser tabs on its computer and operate a webpage in its cloud browser, so the machine was running; only the owner's view of it was broken. verg1l0 deliberately tried no reset, to keep the session and files intact.

Small frictions in long-running work: timezone, passwords, a keyhole-sized screen

• Timezone. jasonpvasquez (6 Oct) was in Central time when the Dot launched. Back home in Eastern time, its cloud computer and browser were still on America/Chicago, and there is no setting to change it permanently. If dates in its logs or bookings look an hour off, say which timezone you want in the request.

• New accounts. matthewtujague (10 Oct) wants the Dot to apply for jobs, but smaller job boards require an account first. Creating each account by hand and then saving it was tedious enough that they asked for a built-in password generator.

• The keyhole and the reset. Daareek (4 Oct) watched the Dot open GIMP and draw on its own computer, and called the small remote-desktop window "a powerful workstation through a keyhole". In their testing, files and setup sometimes vanished after a while and later sessions seemed to run on a different machine, which matches what wschenkai saw (above). They also use the Dot to find old ChatGPT conversations, but because it gives no direct link, the Dot quotes a distinctive phrase and Daareek pastes it into ChatGPT search. promptsvsevil (10 Oct) added that a persistent machine also needs clear signals about who is in control and whether the agent is running or waiting.

• Files from an Android phone. KaienMin (13 Oct) wanted to hand files to the Dot from an Android phone and have the work done on its cloud computer. In the Downloads picker, ZIP archives and an Excel file were greyed out before any upload started, including a 506 kB archive and a 3.46 MB spreadsheet, and they had also run into what looked like a 5 MB limit. What worked was a connected PC with the files already downloaded there, which keeps that PC tied up and moves the work into Codex usage. Until OpenAI lists the file types and sizes the Android app accepts, a connected computer is the route that has worked.

• A cloud task the Dot loses hold of. Simon Skinner (@vultuk) (13 Oct) listed two fixes he is waiting for: cloud tasks that don't show up properly in the mobile and desktop apps, and his Dot regularly losing its connection to a cloud task. On his wish list: cloud threads that can talk to each other the way Codex threads on a local machine can, and Mac cloud containers so he can build iOS apps.

• Codex cloud via the Dot keeps disconnecting. Scott Corgan (@scottcorgan) (13 Oct, reply to @Dimillian) wrote that when using Codex cloud with his Dot, it continually just stops doing work or "disconnects".

• Long cloud coding tasks that report "disconnected" but still say in progress. kagoo09 (14 Oct, ChatGPT on Android) logged repeated "environment disconnected" notices on separate delegated cloud coding tasks (a map task, a UI task, a subway task) from 05:09 to at least 16:04 UTC. Each time, reading the task still returned inProgress with error: null. Attachment transfers failed earlier in the day with Tunnel connection failed: 403 Forbidden at the CONNECT step, before the file server was reached, while the same archives opened fine locally. Not everything stopped: one task that had sent a disconnect notice finished minutes later with a saved change and 12 offline checks. kagoo09 does not claim lost data. What helps here is asking the Dot for the task's actual last output, not just its status, before you send another follow-up.

• Copying text out of the cloud desktop. HeyItWorked (13 Oct) copied text in an app running on the Dot's cloud desktop, went back to the Dot chat outside the viewer, and pasted: nothing appeared. Pasting into the cloud computer was not the problem, and neither was copying a Dot reply. Until that works, ask the Dot to put the text in its reply or save it to a file you can open.

• Can't use the connected computer, on Windows or Mac. America First Fury (@FJBNews) (13 Oct, reply to @reach_vb, with a screenshot) wrote that the Dot can't use his computer, after trying both a Windows PC and a Mac.

• A remote reboot, and a cloud browser that types but won't click. Kol Tregaskes (15 Oct, Bluesky thread) couldn't log into x.com from the Dot's cloud computer. On Android he couldn't see it typing, although it was, and the screen never moved on; on the desktop he could see what it had typed but couldn't click anything. The surprise went the other way too: his Dot rebooted his own computer remotely, which he hadn't expected it could do. During a voice session it kept saying it couldn't confirm whether instructions had reached the other work sessions, and an uploaded photo failed on the first retrieval but opened from Library. What he wants is a clear sent, received and started status, so nobody is left wondering whether anything is happening.

A check order for when the browser stalls

Check in this order.

1. Is it the browser or the site? Ask the Dot to load Example.com or Wikipedia first. If those load and one site keeps crashing, the problem is that site in the cloud browser, as vijay7237 showed.
2. Stuck after you signed in? Make sure you selected Return control, then ask once more. If it still says credential protection blocks it, reboot the Dot, which worked for elon11 (for a while).
3. One site always crashes? Ask the Dot to do that step on your connected computer, as OpenAI suggests. It starts without the cloud login, and in SanjayShetty's case that browser failed too.
4. Skip the classic browser fixes. Clearing the cache, toggling graphics acceleration, single-tab restarts and profile-preserving restarts all failed for kairytwo2 and moneywithjakee.
5. If everything crashes, wait. yaojiangyyyy's browser recovered on its own twice that afternoon. Pause long jobs rather than letting the Dot retry in a loop.
6. Picture frozen, or the viewer won't connect? Ask the Dot to list the windows and tabs on its computer. If it can, the machine is running and only your view is stuck. Try the phone app, which worked for deluan and lance.wilhelm, and don't reset anything yet.
7. When you report it, include UTC times, the exact error text and which pages still worked. Every useful report above did this.

A request you can copy:

Before you start, open example.com in your cloud browser and tell me whether it loads. If the site I need crashes with "Error code 9" twice in a row, or you can't read it after I sign in, stop. Then tell me the time in UTC and the exact error, and ask whether to switch to my connected computer.

When files vanish from the cloud computer: what the backups saved and what they didn't

OpenAI's guide says the Dot's cloud computer "can keep its state between periods of use" (Connect computers and apps), but it doesn't say for how long. Between 6 and 14 October, more owners reported that recent work disappeared from that machine while older files stayed, without anyone pressing Pause, Reboot or Reset. The earlier reports (lufesiare, Septdir, nervouna, youcantbearme) are on Dots not showing. The reports below share one useful detail: most of these owners already had backups, so they could see exactly which kinds of backup held and which didn't.

What survived

• Checkpoints saved to Library. leftbankvines had two project folders, with local Git repositories, that the Dot built on 7 October. By the next morning the whole projects folder was gone, while files from 3 October were still there. Fourteen documents were rebuilt from the recorded authoring text, plus one original attachment from Library. On 9 October the rebuilt folders, and the backup utility itself, disappeared again and the machine's hostname had changed. This time a checkpoint saved to Library at 19:30 UTC was retrieved and verified, Git history included. leftbankvines deliberately did not restore it over the missing paths, so Support could look at the machine as it was.
• The same restore, three times in one night. jstrick79 has the Dot back up to Library. On 9 October the Dot found the machine freshly booted three times in about two and a half hours, at 04:07, 05:21 and 06:27 UTC, each a few minutes after the boot. Each time the previous restored copy was gone too, and the Dot restored seven packages (842 files) from Library again. jstrick79 has paused all work until the issue is fixed.
• Exports outside the machine. Jiacheng-Liu runs a long research workspace. After a restart on 8 October, recent datasets, figures and analysis packages were gone while files two or three days older remained. On 10 October work stopped with a preview-limit message at 11:28 UTC; when it resumed at 15:56, several recent folders were missing. Reports already exported to Library and Dropbox were intact. A newer report and an HTML reader that hadn't been exported yet had to be rebuilt.
• Exports to outside cloud storage, again. UTO-mi (14 Oct) saw the error "executor key changed during session recovery" at 01:13:37 UTC, two minutes after the last save they had checked. Afterwards their recent save files, raw recordings and project files were missing, the file system mostly showed files from 2 October, free space jumped from about 5.23 GB to about 29 GB, and the app that had been running was gone. Files already exported to external cloud storage were still there. UTO-mi stopped all work and asked OpenAI to look for a snapshot before anything was reset or overwritten.
• Work on a connected computer. COOLak documented four episodes between 6 and 8 October. All 11 archives saved in Library, about 389 MB, survived. Work the Dot had done on COOLak's separately connected Mac also survived.
• A restore the Dot runs by itself. An earlier report, from 4 October: DaisukeDaisuke found the workspace wiped roughly every 35 to 42 hours, and planned for it rather than recovering by hand. The Dot backs up its tools to GitHub through the GitHub plugin, saves important files to ChatGPT's Library under IDs, writes restore steps that include those IDs, and keeps the steps in a scheduled task, so it can rebuild its environment without anyone stepping in. DaisukeDaisuke says this worked on their own Dot. The 24-hour coding job it protects is build case 24.

What didn't

• The newest file that lived only in the working folder. COOLak's latest DOCX draft had never been saved to Library, so it was lost and had to be reconstructed, and some source links were still missing afterwards (#52217).
• Git repositories that were never pushed. leftbankvines's local repositories and their history stayed unavailable; only the documents could be rebuilt.
• Installed tools and browsers. amanter-Zthen lost a project folder together with an installed Lean 4.34.0 toolchain on 7 October, restored both, and on 10 October saw the restored Lean program vanish again between 11:50 and 12:01 UTC, with disk use dropping from about 13.3 GB to 0.85 GB. Three ZIP archives and a PDF in Library checked out. In amanter-Zthen's words, the backups "allowed reconstruction, but did not preserve a ready-to-use working environment". COOLak's Firefox installation and profile disappeared too; Firefox was reinstalled, but its extension and settings were not.
• A tool you upgraded yourself, and the folder it lived in. Mrchen116 (3 Oct) read a project index under /workspace/shared at 09:06 UTC; by 09:36 the whole folder was gone and couldn't be recreated ("Read-only file system"), while the task's own scratch folder and the Library exports survived. Blender 5.2.1, which had been installed inside that shared folder, went with it; the preinstalled Blender 4.3.2 at /usr/bin/blender was still there. The Dot rebuilt 56 files in the scratch folder, confirmed by SHA-256 that the finished model was byte-for-byte the same, and downloaded Blender 5.2.1 again from the vendor, checking its checksum before rendering. Some original source and reference folders were not in any backup. On 14 October KalGuinn saw the same shared folder disappear in the same thread: a Reboot didn't bring it back, and later outside requests were refused with "blocked-by-allowlist".
• The key to the backup itself. topabomb had recovered from an 8 October loss with Library and external WebDAV storage, and by 03:19 UTC on 9 October had synced and verified 30 articles and 14 videos. By 07:54 UTC the two local files holding the WebDAV login and sync settings were missing from the workspace, so the Dot couldn't reach the backup until topabomb supplied the credentials again.
• An app the Dot installed for you to sign in to. Eloitay's Dot installed an app on its computer, and Eloitay signed in to it so the Dot could see the day's planning. About two days later the app was gone. The Dot also told Eloitay that apps it installs can't reach the internet unless it sets up a proxy for them; Eloitay couldn't check what it had actually done (X, 13 Oct, X).

A checkpoint routine you can copy

This routine combines what the owners above did to keep their files.

1. After each milestone, not only at the end, have the Dot save finished files to Library or a connected drive, and say which files it saved. Ask for a SHA-256 checksum of each one too, so a restored copy can be proved identical, as Mrchen116 did.
2. Push code to a remote repository. A commit that exists only on the cloud computer is not a backup.
3. Keep a short setup script next to the backup that reinstalls the tools and browser the job needs, so the environment can be rebuilt as well as the files.
4. Don't rely on login files kept on the cloud computer to reach your backup. Expect to supply them again.
5. Start each session by checking a marker file. If it's gone, the Dot should stop and tell you before restoring anything over the missing folders.
6. If you report it, give UTC times and what survived, as every report above did.

At the start of every session, check that [marker file] still exists. If it's missing, stop, tell me the time in UTC and which folders are gone, and don't restore anything until I answer. After each milestone, save the finished files to Library, push code to [remote repo], and update a setup script that reinstalls the tools this job needs. Then list what you saved and anything that exists only on your computer.

Tailscale and your own network: no sudo, no TUN, and a user-level workaround

A common next step after the first week is to connect the cloud computer to your own private network, for example to reach a home NAS or an internal service over Tailscale. On 14 October three people posted what happened when they tried.

The standard install did not work. 东邪西毒 (@Ykklawyer), a lawyer who tests AI tools, gave a Dot one task in three parts: install a legal skill pack, connect a Chinese legal research service, and reach his NAS through Tailscale. The last part failed. He reports that the cloud computer has no sudo and no TUN device, and that tailscaled stopped with "operation not permitted", so the Dot never joined his network. LZHL (@llzhell) ran into the same wall the same day and summed it up in one line: the Dot isn't allowed to install Tailscale.

A user-level setup that does work. 이토니 (@abruptWave) published dots-tailscale, an open-source script set for running Tailscale and a local OpenSSH server as the normal user on a Dots cloud computer, without root or systemd. From the project's README and usage guide:

• Installation files, Tailscale node state and SSH host keys are kept in /workspace, so they survive when the cloud computer is replaced. Sockets, process IDs and logs are recreated in /tmp each time.
• The repository is cloned through the cloud computer's own web proxy, and the first start.sh login prints a URL where you approve the machine on your tailnet.
• Tailscale SSH is switched off. A local OpenSSH server listens on 127.0.0.1:22 and accepts only public keys that you add yourself, and the guide asks you to check the host-key fingerprint in the cloud computer's own terminal before you trust it.
• Nothing starts automatically. After the environment is replaced, you run bash /workspace/.dots-tailscale/start.sh again. The author confirmed that a manual restart worked after a replacement with the previous version, has not yet confirmed it for the revised version, and has not tested starting it from a Dot automation.

The project is independent, not an OpenAI or Tailscale tool, and its author notes that a change to the platform's proxy could break it. In short: the usual kernel-level Tailscale install fails on the Dot's machine, a user-level setup kept in /workspace has been made to work, and you should expect to restart it yourself after each replacement.

Why a command handed back to you can fail too. discko (11 Oct) found that on the same cloud computer, the terminal you open yourself and the Dot's own command runs don't share a network setup. The Dot's runs have proxy variables pointing to local loopback ports, and those ports change from one run to the next; the desktop terminal has no proxy variables at all. A command-line tool started by hand failed with connect: connection refused, while the Dot's own requests to the same host got answers. Because the Dot's safety review often hands commands back for the owner to run, discko was stuck both ways. It fits Eloitay's note above that apps the Dot installs need a proxy before they can reach the internet. If a step the Dot hands you fails on the network, tell it so instead of retrying, and send OpenAI the exact error.

An ask you can copy:

I want you to reach [my NAS / this internal service] over Tailscale. First check whether you have sudo and a TUN device on your computer, and tell me. If you don't, don't try to work around it on your own: show me the user-level setup you would use, which files it keeps in /workspace, and what I would have to approve on my tailnet. Wait for my OK before installing anything, and never ask me to paste an auth key into this chat.

Handing the Dot a password or an API key

Real jobs often need a login, a token or an API key. These three people got stuck at exactly that step, and none of them found a built-in place to hand a credential over.

• A secret the Dot wouldn't take, and a VM too slow to paste it into. chebyte (13 Oct, X article) moved a real workflow onto Dots for a week and then moved it back. His setup had a writer, four jurors that argue about every draft, a watcher and a publisher, and on Dots all of it had to fit into one Dot. When he opened the cloud computer to fix something himself, it lagged so much that he couldn't tell whether a click had landed. The deciding problem was credentials: he gave the Dot a secret directly and it refused to take it, and his fallback, pasting the secret into a file on the VM himself, failed because the VM was too hard to use. He ends by asking whether anyone has Dots doing real work with credentials.
• Passwords saved in the keychain. Cristian (@emergencias_tes) (13 Oct) asked why his Dot can't use the passwords saved in its keychain on its own.
• A password manager for the agent. justin20061023 (OpenAI Community, 12 Oct) found that the credential hand-off was what kept the Dot from legitimate work, and asked for a built-in password manager, so the Dot wouldn't have to use the one in his browser session.

The route other cases on this page used is signing in by hand in the Dot's own browser through takeover (section 4). It doesn't always hold, as "Signed in by hand, but the Dot still can't read the page" above shows, and in these threads OpenAI hasn't said when a credential store is coming.

An ask you can copy:

Before you start this job, list every login, token or API key it needs, and for each one tell me whether you can already reach it in your own browser or files. Don't ask me to paste a secret into this chat. For any you can't reach, stop and tell me, and I'll sign in myself through takeover.

Cloud computer or your own computer?

The cloud computer is the default place for work that needs no files from your laptop: installs, renders, downloads, and long runs. When the job touches files on your own machine, people connect that computer instead. A Korean teacher, @olivece2017 (6 Oct 2026), had her Dot sort 1,545 files in her Downloads folder, pull out 151 papers, and rename 92 files to their real titles. It moved 106 exact duplicates to the trash only after she confirmed. She notes the file work ran through her connected computer, while the Dot kept going on its cloud computer between conversations.

A Japanese engineering firm, Creer (1 Oct 2026, in Japanese), connected its development PC and handed one Dot two live projects: an AI agent for sluice-gate design that works with rebar drawings, DXF and PDF files, and an internal AI research tool. The Dot read the status files kept in each project folder (AGENTS.md, CURRENT_STATUS.md, CODEX_HANDOFF.md) to work out where each project stood, then split the work into separate local tasks that changed files and ran tests. On day one it could not reach a Google Drive for desktop drive or the company NAS the same way, and writes back to the original folders were sometimes stopped by permissions. The firm's own note: passing tests did not prove the design checks were right.

Connecting your own computer also means the Dot can read what is on it. Turkish developer Onur Tirpan (4 Oct 2026, in Turkish) set up a Dot on his everyday machine and, by his account, within minutes it was going through Git repositories and history, installed and open apps, and his ChatGPT history. Asked in voice mode what it had looked at, it listed everything for two and a half minutes, down to health details and salary talks. His own conclusion was that he should have tried it in a VM or Docker container rather than on his main computer. OpenAI's getting started guide says local access is optional, starts turned off, and can be removed with Revoke access.

Connecting your own computer has a few requirements that early users ran into. OpenAI's guide to computers and apps says to open the Dot's profile in the ChatGPT app on that computer, find Your computer under Computers, and select Allow access, then keep the computer online and the ChatGPT app open while the Dot uses it. On a work account, OpenAI's admin guide to local computer access adds two steps: a workspace owner has to turn on Allow local computer access under Use Dots, and users need ChatGPT desktop version 26.929 or newer. That version didn't reach everyone at launch. wlzglfyi (OpenAI Community, 1 October 2026) found the Fedora package still at 26.928.31416 and the Windows x64 download at 26.928.2636.0; a day later the Linux package moved to 26.930.21537-1, installable with sudo dnf upgrade --refresh chatgpt. On 14 October, OpenAI Support confirmed in the thread that this build meets the documented minimum and asked wlzglfyi to try a local task and share the exact error if it fails. sebastian.hemmil01 couldn't get Windows 11 past 26.928 in the same thread. ヤッテミストひで (Hide) (note, 2 October 2026, in Japanese) tried to have the Dot use the browser on his Windows PC from the desktop app and couldn't; his app was on 26.928.3736.0, and he says he isn't sure the version was the only reason. If your Dot can't see your computer, check the app version before anything else.

The two sides also behave differently on Windows. u/RzachPrime (6 Oct 2026) found that the Dot could not use Computer Use from the Windows ChatGPT app, even though a local Codex chat confirmed the tools were installed. They had a command-line Codex instance write a Python toolkit that lets the Dot control the desktop for its assigned tasks, which needed elevated permissions, and shared it on GitHub (Made with Dots summary).

frkgldn (OpenAI Community, 12 October 2026) pinned down the same split on Windows 11 with desktop app 26.1007.21434. In a regular local chat, Computer Use opened Calculator, entered 2 + 2 and captured the 4 in a screenshot. The same test launched as a Dot task failed before any screen capture with "MXC launcher: cannot locate required Windows platform directory: HRESULT 0x80070003", again and again on 9 and 10 October (UTC). Fully restarting the app and trying both elevated and unelevated sandbox settings didn't fix it. Their temporary workaround is to route the job through a separate local chat.

BUILD LOCAL LAB (@BuildLocalLab) (14 Oct 2026, in Japanese, with a follow-up) hit the same MXC error when their Dot tried to open Chrome on the Windows PC: "MXC launcher: cannot locate required Windows platform directory: HRESULT 0x80070003". Support asked them to try @Chrome and @Computer in a separate local Work session — both worked on the same PC and the same Chrome; only the Dots path failed. A read-only PowerShell check found SystemDrive, SystemRoot, windir, ProgramData, USERPROFILE, LOCALAPPDATA and APPDATA all present. Support told them not to change sandbox, environment or security settings, and that reinstalling would not help (this is not file corruption). They also saw the related "trusted Node process exited unexpectedly; kernel reset, rerun your request" message, which they treat as the browser worker dying after MXC fails. Their advice for support tickets: paste the full error and note that Work still works.

Liri (OpenAI Community, 14 October 2026) saw the same split, then a second failure. In a normal chat, Chrome Integration controlled Chrome on their Windows PC. Through the Dot, the local computer-use tool failed with "MXC launcher HRESULT 0x80070003" before it could read any tabs, and restarting the desktop app didn't help. After a restart on 14 October, the next attempt failed earlier: "HTTP 401 Unauthorized" while the local task was fetching the conversation context it needed to start. The computer still showed as connected and authorized for tasks and the Dot could read ordinary chat messages, but no task ID came back and no browser tool ran. Liri asked OpenAI which diagnostics a 401 at task start needs.

If the cloud computer shows Unavailable, Offline, or a failed preparation message, see the cloud computer section of Dots not showing, which lists the reports filed so far.

Asks you can copy

• "Install what you need on your computer to transcribe this video, then give me a first review of the linked repo."

• "Build this in Blender on your own computer from the attached photo. Send renders when it is done and package the editable file as a ZIP."

• "Each time I add a task to this Google Drive doc, work through the list one by one on your computer and report what is finished."

• "Write this small app on your computer, run it, fix whatever fails, and send me the source code and a short list of what you fixed."

• "Install the command-line tool I name on your computer, check that it runs, and use it for the repetitive part of this job."

• "Before you connect to my private network, tell me whether you have sudo and a TUN device. If not, explain the user-level option and what I need to approve, and wait for my OK." (based on the Tailscale reports above)

• "Before you run tests for several projects, queue the heavy ones so they do not all run at once, and tell me the order."

• "Install this chat app in the browser on your computer. Once I have signed you in, read today's customer conversations and write meeting notes for each one. Do not reply to anyone."

• "Split this long job between your sub-agents: one proposes, one reviews, one checks it with a tool. Nothing counts as done until a second agent and the check agree. Keep a short status file on your computer so you can pick up again if the workspace is reset."

• "Before I buy a bigger computer, run one of my heavy coding jobs in my published Codex cloud environment instead of on my machine. Tell me how long it took, what I still had to fix and how much usage it cost, and list the work that still needs my own computer. Don't change anything on my computer." (based on case 41)

• "Here is a reference image of [object or building]. Build it as a 3D model in Blender on your computer, export it as [GLB], re-import the file to check that it opens correctly, and send me a render from the same angle next to the reference. List what you changed from the reference and anything you couldn't match." (based on cases 42 and 43)

• "Open Chrome on my connected Windows PC and list the open tabs. If you hit MXC launcher HRESULT 0x80070003, stop and tell me — don't ask me to reinstall. I'll try the same step in a local Work session with @Chrome." (based on the mid-October BuildLocalLab and frkgldn reports)

Related

• Features · Dots with Codex · Building apps & sites · Dots not showing or not working · Teachers & students · Google Drive · Pricing and usage · All use cases
• Video editing & animation, including Blender films, Remotion edits, and a ComfyUI workflow a Dot built
• How to get ChatGPT Dots · Dots in the EU and UK · Dots + GitHub