Building ChatGPT Integrations: Apps SDK Best Practices
OpenAI launched the Apps SDK with impressive pilot partners including Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow. This guide examines how these companies successfully integrated their services with ChatGPT and provides a roadmap for your own integration.
Integration Patterns from Launch Partners
Booking.com: Travel and Accommodation
Booking.com's ChatGPT app demonstrates sophisticated context awareness and multi-step workflow handling. The integration excels at understanding ambiguous requests like "find me somewhere to stay in Europe next month" by extracting implicit requirements from context, suggesting destinations based on user preferences, presenting options with rich visual information, and handling booking flow entirely within ChatGPT.
- Search API with natural language query translation
- Real-time availability and pricing
- Secure booking and payment processing
- Confirmation and itinerary management
Key Integration Points:
Canva's integration transforms ChatGPT into a design assistant. Users can describe what they want to create in natural language, and Canva generates appropriate designs. The app handles template selection based on use case and style preferences, design element customization through conversation, and export in multiple formats.
Canva: Creative Design
Key Integration Points:
- Design generation API with natural language input
- Template library with semantic search
- Real-time preview rendering
- Asset library integration
Spotify: Music Discovery and Playback
Spotify's app brings music discovery and control into ChatGPT conversations. It understands nuanced requests like "play something upbeat for working out" by mapping mood and context to appropriate music, creating custom playlists on the fly, controlling playback across devices, and learning from user preferences over time.
Key Integration Points:
- Music recommendation engine with context awareness
- Playback control API
- Playlist management
- User preference learning
Authentication and Authorization
Technical Integration Architecture
Launch partners typically use OAuth 2.0 to enable users to connect their existing accounts seamlessly. The Apps SDK handles the authentication flow, token management, and refresh automatically.
Apps SDK supports multiple authentication patterns to accommodate different service architectures. OAuth 2.0 for user-authorized access to accounts, API keys for service-level authentication, JWT tokens for secure, stateless sessions, and custom authentication schemes with proper security review.
API Design Considerations
Successful integrations share common API design patterns:
Natural Language Input: Design endpoints to accept natural language queries rather than requiring structured parameters. The Apps SDK includes tools for extracting structured data from conversational input, but your API should be flexible enough to handle ambiguity.
Context Awareness: Accept context parameters that provide conversation history, user preferences, and session state. Use this context to provide personalized, relevant results.
Async Operations: For long-running operations, implement async patterns with status checking. ChatGPT can maintain conversation flow while your app processes requests in the background.
Response Formatting: Return data in formats optimized for conversational display. Include not just raw data but also suggested phrases for ChatGPT to use when presenting information.
User Experience Patterns
Progressive Disclosure
Confirmation and Validation
Start with simple, concise responses and offer more detail on request. Launch partners like Expedia excel at this—initial responses might show 3-4 flight options, with an offer to "see more options" or "show detailed comparison."
For consequential actions (booking, purchases, deletions), implement clear confirmation steps. Show users exactly what will happen before executing. Provide easy ways to cancel or modify requests.
Error Handling
Errors should be conversational and helpful. Instead of "Error 401: Unauthorized," consider "It looks like I need permission to access your Spotify account. Would you like to connect it now?"
Security and Privacy
- Secure credential storage and transmission
- Minimal data collection—only what's necessary for functionality
- Clear privacy policies describing data usage
- User control over data sharing and retention
- Compliance with relevant regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.)
Launch partners underwent rigorous security review. Key requirements include:
Monetization Strategies
While OpenAI will announce monetization details later in 2025, launch partners are exploring several approaches. Freemium models with basic functionality free and premium features paid, transaction fees for commerce enabled through the app, subscription plans for power users, and affiliate commissions for referrals.
Conversational interfaces demand fast response times. Launch partners optimize performance through response caching for common queries, CDN distribution of assets and media, database query optimization, and async processing for non-critical operations.
Performance Optimization
Analytics and Iteration
Aim for sub-500ms response times for initial acknowledgment and under 3 seconds for complete responses.
Successful integrations continuously improve based on real usage data. Track completion rates for different intent types, common failure modes and errors, user satisfaction signals, and most frequently used features.
Launch partners typically run A/B tests on response formats, confirmation flows, and feature discovery to optimize the experience.
Getting Started with Your Integration
Review the Apps SDK documentation and launch partner examples. Identify your core use cases—what should users be able to do through ChatGPT? Design your API with conversational interaction in mind. Implement authentication and basic functionality. Test extensively in Developer Mode. Submit for review when ready.
The Apps SDK opens up ChatGPT's massive user base to your service. By following the patterns established by successful launch partners, you can create integrations that feel natural, powerful, and essential to users' ChatGPT experience.