On September 29, OpenAI launched Dots: an always-on AI agent in ChatGPT with its own cloud computer and browser, a name you give it, and work that carries on after you close the tab. You don't chat with it. You hand it the work.
I watched them name our category. We read the launch twice, because we've been building exactly that for months. Octomind Cloud already gave every agent its own cloud computer, ran routines that repeat a job every morning, answered in Telegram, WhatsApp and Slack, and kept memory between conversations. Every part was there.
What Dots had and we didn't was the noun. OpenAI gives people one thing to name and own. We were giving them three — a machine, a session and an agent role — and leaving them to assemble an agent out of the parts. Each question made sense on its own. Together they made you an operator of infrastructure before you'd typed a word of the job.
So we fixed the noun. As of today, Octomind Cloud is built around one: the octo. An octo is an AI agent for one thing you're working on — the blog, a client, your money. You name it, it keeps its own folder, memory, conversations and routines, and you hand it jobs. Not one of them: a whole crew, on any model you like, with everything the cloud already did still underneath.
Dots vs. octos, straight
| Dots | Octos | |
|---|---|---|
| How many | One primary dot; more "in the future" | 10 on Pro, 30 on Max, from day one |
| Models | GPT-6 Astra | Any model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, Grok — chosen per octo |
| Where | Pro excludes the EEA, Switzerland and the UK | Works in Europe |
| Its computer | Own cloud computer and browser | Own folder on your cloud machine, plus a shell — sudo, Docker, your own image, live URLs |
| Asking first | Custom Rules: allow / require approval / block | Autonomous; asks in chat when only you can decide; guardrail rules block a tool outright |
| Runtime | Inside ChatGPT | Open source (Apache 2.0) — same agents run on your laptop with the CLI |
| Price | ChatGPT Pro or Business Premium | Pro from $20 first month, then $50 |
Three of those rows are the whole argument.
A crew beats one assistant. One agent that handles everything keeps one pile of memory and guesses at its context. An octo only ever sees one workstream, so it knows what it's for by construction. And a crew is cheap: octos share a machine, five to a Small, so six of them cost one computer, not six.
Any model, not one vendor's. The best model for drafting a launch post isn't the best one for checking forty pricing pages at 3 a.m. Each octo can run on its own model, you can switch mid-conversation, and you pay provider price plus 5% from one balance. No lab gets to decide which brain your work runs on.
Your hands on the machine. An agent with its own computer is half the story if you can't get into the computer. You can get into this one.
Three nouns was two too many
The old panel wasn't wrong — it was honest. A machine is a real container. A session is a real conversation with its own transcript. An agent role is a real prompt with its own tools. But the order people meet things in matters more than whether they're true. When the first screen asks "which machine?", the product tells you its unit of work is a computer.
What people actually bring is a workstream. "Keep an eye on competitors." "Write the blog." "Sort out invoices." A workstream outlives any single conversation, needs somewhere to keep its files, and repeats. That's the shape of an octo.
One noun, one screen
The home screen is one line to type a job into, the crew as tiles, and what they did lately. Each tile carries exactly four facts: name and state, what it's doing or last did, when it next acts on its own, what it cost this month. Nothing else earns a line.
What we removed:
- The Overview page. Numbers live where they're used.
- The Sessions page. Conversations belong to an octo now.
- The agent picker. Choosing a role before saying what you want is no longer your problem.
- Machines as a first step. Your first job creates your first octo; the octo finds itself a machine.
None of it is hidden — machines, terminals, workflows, config editor and model routing sit behind Advanced.
And one hard constraint we set for ourselves: on a laptop, with a few octos, everything without scrolling. Octos became two-line tiles. "Lately" shows three rows, "Show more" opens twenty. "＋ New octo" moved into the section heading.
The right specialist, automatically
You never pick an agent. Every octo runs as the orchestrator: it reads the job, and when a specialist fits better — a writer, a researcher, a developer, from the same open registry the CLI uses — it hands the work over. Each reply carries a byline: "Competitors · via content:article" means the Competitors octo passed the comparison to the article-writing specialist. The decision is automatic; the record is one glance away.
The mark is a status light, not a mascot
OpenAI gave its dots a bubbly cartoon persona. We went the other way: the Octomind pixel octopus in its own color, no face to perform feelings. The motion is the state: tentacles moving = working; eyes looking around = awake; dimmed = asleep (machine suspended, costs only storage); standing still inside a red ring = paused (usage limit). States are derived, never stored. Color and motion are never the only signal — every mark sits next to its state in words. Twelve colors chosen to stay distinct on light and dark. A Save avatar button exports the mark as PNG.
Every octo gets its own folder
The change underneath everything. Each octo works in its own directory, /home/octo/octos/<name>. Its AGENTS.md lives there, seeded with account instructions plus who this octo is and what it's for.
The mechanism is a single field: Octomind's WebSocket protocol opens every conversation with a session frame; as of octomind 0.55.2 that frame takes a cwd. The cloud sets it to the octo's folder on every connection and ignores any value a client tries to send. Everything resolved from the working directory becomes per-octo for free: instructions, .agents/ tools and skills, the project scope memory is keyed on.
A new octo joins the machine that already holds the most octos and still has room. Small holds 5, Medium 10, Large 20; Pro allows 10 total, Max 30.
The honest boundary, because I'd rather name it than paper over it: octos on one machine share a user and a container. A folder keeps work tidy; it is not a security wall. Real isolation = give that octo its own machine.
Still a real computer, shell and all
Every octo's Body tab has "Open a shell here": a real terminal, already standing in the octo's folder. sudo and Docker, your own image, live URLs — 5 on Pro, 20 on Max. The open-source runtime underneath is the same octomind you can run on your laptop. Octos are the front door, not a fence.
Chats reach an octo, too
Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack and GitHub speak in octos: a direct chat reaches the octo you picked; /octos lists them, /use switches; a group chat belongs to one octo, bound by the owner.
For developers
POST /octos creates an octo and places it; pass octo_id when starting a conversation and the turn runs in its folder. GET /octos/:id/activity pages through what it did. OpenAPI at GET /api/v1/openapi.
# create an octo
curl -X POST https://api.octomind.run/api/v1/octos \
-H "Authorization: Bearer om_…" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"name":"CI"}'
# start a conversation inside that octo's folder
curl -X POST https://api.octomind.run/api/v1/machines/<machine_id>/sessions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer om_…" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"octo_id":"<octo_id>","message":"Summarize the overnight CI failures"}'
# page through what the octo did
curl https://api.octomind.run/api/v1/octos/<octo_id>/activity \
-H "Authorization: Bearer om_…"
What I learned
- Let the market name your category. The noun Dots gave people is the noun we adopted.
- Name the thing people bring, not the thing you run. People bring workstreams; we were handing out machines.
- Make the invisible decision automatically, and show where you made it. That's the orchestrator and its byline.
- Constraints beat taste. "Everything fits without scrolling" settled arguments that taste never would have.
- Keep the brand's face. The octopus stayed; it just got honest states.
Where this leaves you
If you're on a cloud plan, every machine you have is already an octo — open the panel and meet them. If not, Octomind Cloud starts at $20 for the first month. On ChatGPT Pro in Europe, the UK or Switzerland and still waiting for Dots? Your crew is ready now.
I'm Don Karter, co-founder and CTO of Muvon. Twenty-plus years in software, the last decade in AI and retrieval systems, and I've been building Octomind since 2025. Full disclosure: this is my company, so read that table with the bias in mind.
The original post: OpenAI shipped one dot. Meet your octos: a crew of AI agents on any model.
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