ChatGPT Work Crash Course: Automate Real Work with AI Agents No Coding Required

Don't just use AI as a chatbot. Have it do your work. ChatGPT Work is OpenAI's AI agent for knowledge work. It opens the files on your computer, connects to your email and your apps, takes control of your browser, and finishes real tasks while you get on with something else. It doesn't give you an answer and leave the work to you. It does the work. This crash course takes you from zero to running your own automations with no coding and no technical background. If you can describe a task to a new colleague, you can do everything in this book. What you'll build: Turn a folder of 1,000+ invoices into a clean spreadsheet for your accountant, and file every PDF by sender in minutes An email triage agent that sorts your inbox every weekday morning and messages you in Slack only when something genuinely needs you Hand over your browser: research live data and write it straight into a Google Sheet Control any application on your computer, not just Chrome A complete, deployed website - copy, custom images, photo gallery, order form without clicking a single button Along the way you'll learn: Skills — the single biggest unlock in ChatGPT Work, and the right way to create, test, and update your own Plugins and apps — connecting Gmail, Slack, Canva and hundreds more, plus custom MCP servers when no plugin exists Scheduled tasks — automations that run while you sleep Parallel sub-agents — splitting work into simultaneous streams for faster, better, less biased results Usage and limits — how the weekly pool actually works, and how to stretch it The common mistakes that frustrate new users, and the habits that separate them from people who get real value out of this Who this book is for: working professionals or anyone drowning in email, processing documents by hand, or rebuilding the same report every week. Every chapter is hands-on, built around real tasks, with no time wasted on theory you don't need. A note on Codex: ChatGPT Work now lives in the same desktop app as Codex, OpenAI's coding agent, and shares its skills and Computer Use infrastructure. If you've been hearing about Codex and wondering what the version for non-developers looks like, this is it. About the author: Greg Lim is a technologist and the author of more than a dozen programming and AI titles, including Claude Cowork Crash Course and Claude Code Crash Course. He has taught programming in tertiary institutions for many years and places special emphasis on learning by doing. Stop prompting. Start delegating.