OpenAI’s always-on AI agents hit glitches as clones emerge

Less than two weeks after OpenAI launched dots, its "always-on" AI agents, users are reporting failed tasks, dropped connections and agents that vanish. At the same time, developers have started releasing free, open-source versions that people can host themselves.

The Register reported on October 7 that users have described task failures, connection problems with dots' cloud computers, dots disappearing, and refusals that seem to come from abuse-prevention filters. Several threads on OpenAI's Developer Community forum describe the same issues. OpenAI did not answer the publication's request for comment.theregister

A rocky start for persistent agents

OpenAI introduced dots at its DevDay 2026 event in San Francisco on September 29. The agents run on the company's GPT-6 Astra model. Each one has its own cloud computer and browser and can connect to more than 4,000 apps. The first dot comes with the $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan. Pro users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK can't get dots yet.wired+1

Some people online have suggested OpenAI rushed dots out to answer Meta ↘ 0.31% Muse and Grok Bot, The Register said. It also noted security concerns and doubts about whether people actually want this kind of product. Meta's Muse launched on September 8. ABI Research still expects these always-on agents, which it calls "AI claws," to shape how businesses adopt AI.threads+1

The imitators

CopilotKit, the open-source SDK made by a company The Register calls Tawkit, released OpenDots on October 1. The company called it "the open-source alternative to OpenAI Dots". "It's a great idea, but dots are closed, run only on OpenAI's models and are limited to certain plans and regions," the company wrote. It said OpenDots "gives you the same thing as a template you host yourself," and works with any OpenAI-compatible model. The company says OpenDots is "an alpha template, not a hosted product". It runs on the same base as the company's earlier OpenMuse and OpenBot projects.copilotkit+3

A second project, confusingly named Open Dot, is a desktop app for Mac built on the Electron framework. It uses either the user's own OpenAI key or open models such as Kimi, DeepSeek and Qwen through OpenRouter. It connects to Gmail, Slack, Notion and GitHub through Composio. The project's creator, Prathit Joshi, is a growth engineer at Composio based in Bangalore.theregister

"I enjoy building and shipping tools for developers, especially tools that can support use cases that closed model companies aren't necessarily incentivized to support, like allowing open source models," Joshi told The Register.theregister

Models as commodities

Hosting an agent yourself still costs money in model tokens, but OpenAI would no longer be the one sending the bill. The rush of copies reflects a wider trend: companies are building their own layers on top of AI models that are becoming harder to tell apart. On October 6, Elon Musk said Grok Bot would become a model router, choosing among different back-end models rather than relying on one. "Going forward, SpaceX will use the best back end model for any given task, including Claude Opus 5.5, MidJourney, Suno and other leading APIs," he said.theregister