OpenAI is quietly building a new "capability operating system" for ChatGPT. According to a recent disclosure by BleepingComputer, OpenAI has been internally testing a new feature called "Skills" (Skills), which shares a similar design philosophy with Anthropic's Claude Skills, but emphasizes modularity, executability, and cross-platform reusability. This feature, codenamed "hazelnuts" (hazelnuts), is expected to be officially launched around January 2026, and could revolutionize the way users collaborate with AI.

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Skills ≠ GPTs: From "Custom Assistant" to "Capability Module"

Currently, ChatGPT's GPTs rely on prompt engineering to encapsulate specific functions, while Skills are more fundamental pre-trained capability units:   

- Organized in folders, including instructions, context, examples, and even executable code;  

- Automatically identified, dynamically loaded, and combined by AI during tasks;  

- Support converting existing GPTs into Skills with one click, achieving capability accumulation and reuse.

For example, users can create a "Financial Analysis Skill," embedded with Python scripts, financial report parsing rules, and visualization templates. When asked, "Analyze this financial report trend," ChatGPT automatically calls this Skill, runs the code, generates charts, and provides an analysis—without needing to repeatedly describe the request or manually paste the code.

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Four Core Features Define a New Standard for AI Capabilities

1. Composability: Multiple Skills can be used together, such as "Translation + Legal Review + Contract Generation" to form a compliance workflow for international expansion;  

2. Portability: Built once, usable across ChatGPT Web, mobile, API, and third-party applications;  

3. Efficiency: Loaded on demand, avoiding redundant calculations of the full model;  

4. Scalability: Supports encapsulating multimodal capabilities such as text, tool calls, and code snippets.

Interaction Method Revealed: Slash Commands + Visual Editor

According to UI screenshots leaked on social platforms, Skills will be quickly accessible via slash commands (e.g., "/financial-analysis") and come with a visual editor that allows users to drag-and-drop modules, write logic, and test effects, greatly lowering the development barrier.

Why Now? To Compete in the Agent Ecosystem

As AI agents become the industry focus, OpenAI is accelerating its transition from a "dialogue model" to a "programmable intelligent platform." The Skills mechanism will allow developers to build complex agents like building blocks, while ordinary users can also access professional capabilities through shared skill libraries—this is a key move for OpenAI to compete against Claude, Gemini, and open-source agent frameworks.