OpenAI launches new tools to help developers build AI agents

Agents are said to be the future of AI, and now OpenAI is trying to help developers build their own. The company is releasing a new Responses API that offers building blocks for developers to create agents capable of searching the web, digging through files, and performing tasks on a computer on their behalf.

“There are some agents that we will be able to build ourselves, like Deep Research and Operator,” Olivier Godement, the head of product for the OpenAI platform, tells The Verge. “But the world is so complex, there are so many industries and use cases… and so we’re super excited to provide those foundations, those building blocks for developers to build the best agents for their use case, their needs.”

The Responses API comes with a web search tool built on the same model ChatGPT uses for search, allowing developers to get real-time information and citations from the web while using GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini. It also has a computer-use feature that similarly uses the company’s Operator model to perform tasks on a user’s behalf. The Responses API also has a tool to search through large volumes of documents, with OpenAI billing it as a way to help customer support agents sift through FAQs or for a legal assistant to locate previous cases.

Along with the Responses API, OpenAI also announced the Agents SDK, which it describes as a way for developers to “orchestrate” the workflow of AI agents. “The Responses API is like this atomic unit of using models and tools to do a particular thing,” Nikunj Handa, a product manager for OpenAI’s API team, tells The Verge. “The Agents SDK is having multiple of those atomic units work together to solve even more complicated tasks.” That should make it easier for developers to manage all of their agents and ensure they work toward a single goal.

The rollout of the Responses API and Agents SDK builds on the existing tools that OpenAI offers to developers, including the Chat Completions API, which lets developers build AI tools that offer a response to users’ queries. OpenAI is also planning to replace its Assistants API with the Responses API in mid-2026. The company says it “incorporated key improvements into the Responses API” using the feedback developers provided about the Assistants API.

You can learn more about OpenAI’s new developer tools from its website.