ChatGPT plugin

How to put a product into OpenAI's plugin directory, which ChatGPT and Codex share, and get through review the first time. Nothing here depends on a stack: the server is any remote MCP server, in any language, behind any OAuth provider or none. The rules come from OpenAI's own pages, read on 2026-10-26, and from two products' submissions: a live Q&A product that submitted a plugin with no sign-in (rejected once, then resubmitted), and a monitoring product preparing one behind OAuth. They appear here only as examples.

OpenAI's pages, each available as Markdown by appending .md: developers.openai.com/plugins/deploy/submission, /deploy/submission-errors, /deploy/app-review, /plugin-guidelines, /build/plugins, /build/auth, /reference and /deploy/connect-chatgpt.

What binds, in order

1. OpenAI's current pages. They change without notice, and on 2026-10-26 they contradicted each other in six places (§ Where OpenAI's pages disagree). Read them again before every upload and every submission, and record the date. Where this skill and a page disagree, the page wins and this skill gets a dated correction.
2. This skill, for what the pages leave out: what the portal and the reviewers actually did.
3. The server's own engineering rules. This skill covers only what ChatGPT adds to an MCP server. The route, tool descriptions, output schemas and their tests are the mcp-server skill's, if you use this collection; this skill does not need it.

Two ways in