OpenAI’s recent releases have given developers more options for using AI in software. At its 2026 DevDay, the company introduced new models, tools, and agents that raise practical questions about cost, speed, safety, and how teams keep up.

On September 29, OpenAI held its fourth annual DevDay near its San Francisco headquarters. The company listed more than 20 major announcements across ChatGPT, Codex, its models, and developer APIs. Among them were GPT-6.1 Sol and a faster Ultrafast tier for GPT-6 Astra; Ultrafast support for Sol followed on October 8.

The announcements included OpenAI dots, persistent agents that can work in the background. Backed by GPT-6 Astra, they can connect to more than 4,000 apps through OpenAI’s plugin ecosystem and take on ongoing responsibilities. 

These agents run continuously in the background, researching and monitoring, then suggesting actions — completing pull requests (PRs), drafting messages, documentation, and analysis, or booking meetings — for human-in-the-loop review. Depending on a user’s rules and the action involved, a dot may proceed, request approval, or leave a sensitive task to the user.

Other updates included the Decisions API, which uses predefined answer choices to classify inputs or route requests, and computer use in the Agents API, which lets agents interact with software interfaces.

Ahead of OpenAI’s Dev Day Exchange on November 3 in London, Vaibhav “VB” Srivastav , OpenAI developer experience and community lead for EMEA, told The New Stack about the cascade of features the company is releasing. The London-based Srivastav also noted how the new releases may affect the day-to-day work of engineers.

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