🗝️ You own your skills, not the platform
"The tools will change. The philosophy stays the same." — Ethan King
🔑 This issue at a glance (2-second summary)
Custom GPTs are going away, but what you learned about building them will serve you for life. Here's what to do next.
Your custom GPT was practice
If you attended one of my workshops from 2023 through the first half of 2026, you learned the fundamentals of AI and left knowing how to build custom GPTs. Custom GPTs were like having digital assistants before skills, plugins, and agents became more mainstream.
I also kept saying the same thing: once you understand how to build a custom GPT, you understand the fundamental framework behind an agent: Give it a job. Give it context. Write clear instructions. Supply trusted knowledge. Define the output. Add tools when needed. Test it against real work.
Now OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs.
At first, I was really irritated about this because I use dozens of custom GPTs, but then I realized that what is happening is exactly what I teach. The tools will always change, but once you understand the fundamentals of how it works, it's pretty effortless to make your tools portable. Below, I'll teach you exactly what I did.
But first, ask yourself: Why are they retiring custom GPTs, which were a very useful tool for so many? I've read the writing on the wall, and my take is that there are two reasons:
They can make more money from the same feature that was included free with paid plans, and
There are other ways to achieve the same functionality as custom GPTs for your own internal and team use.
OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents, a new advertising format that lets someone click an ad and start a conversation with a business-sponsored AI representative. That agent might answer product questions, explain a service, or guide an interested buyer toward the right offer. This is only available to limited accounts right now, but you may soon be able to build sponsored agents for your business. Something tells me that the build process will be very similar to building a custom GPT.
My read? OpenAI is retiring a creator-published conversational storefront while testing a paid conversational storefront. They have not openly stated that one decision caused the other, but the timing is hard to ignore.
Here's the business opportunity for you: The custom GPTs you built can become portable skills, internal assistants, website guides, lead qualifiers, or the foundation of a larger agent that actually completes work.
The different platforms own their storefronts, but you own your skills and expertise.
Winners take action
Convert your custom GPTs into skills and plugins now. Determine which ones you should keep using internally and which ones you might be able to convert into sponsored agents one day so that you can use them to generate revenue for your business.
Open Codex (or Claude Code, whichever you use) and say "Change all of my custom GPTs into portable skill files or plugins I can use in any AI application or give to future agents."
It reads each GPT's instructions, knowledge, and defined job, and writes them out as clean skill files. It can package them with tools if needed to create plugins.
I get this question a lot: What's the difference between a skill, a plugin, and an agent?
A skill is the playbook. A plugin is the kit. An agent is the worker.
The tools you need
Challenge: Now that your skills are portable, you need to make sure they are backed up so they stay with you.
Solution: Have Codex or Claude Code back the whole folder up to the cloud and keep it synced, then mirror that to a physical drive.
Try this in 10 minutes:
After Codex converts your GPTs, tell it: "Back up my skills folders and files to Google Drive (or Dropbox) and keep them synced automatically."
Confirm the sync is live. Change one file, and watch it update in the cloud folder.
Plug in an external hard drive and have Codex copy the same folder there too, so you hold an offline version nothing online can touch.
Set a monthly reminder to check that drive and confirm everything still matches.
Now your business logic lives in three places at once. Next time a platform changes something on you, your expertise stays right where you can reach it.
This week's podcast highlight
I joined John Lee Dumas on Entrepreneurs on Fire to break down the Six Levels of AI Autonomy, from basic chat all the way up to proactive agents that own an outcome.
Here's the part that matters more now than when we recorded it: custom GPTs sit near the bottom of that ladder. They taught all of us to package instructions, knowledge, and a defined job into one place. Agents take that exact same thinking and add tools, memory, and the power to act.
If you want to hear where the ladder goes from here, give it a listen.
Listen to the full EOFire conversation here.
Stop playing life on hard mode. Automate your success.
Until next week,
Ethan King
A.I. Automation for Business Growth
Keynote Speaker | Author | CEO | Strategist
P.S. On Monday, September 28, I'm running Build My AI Team Live, where I walk you through building your own AI employees in real time. Not theory. You build alongside me. Spots are limited and the waitlist is open now: buildmyaiteam.live
P.P.S. Here's where I'll be speaking and working with teams over the next couple of months. If you'll be at one of these, come say hello. And if your team could use hands-on help putting AI to work, let's talk.
September 23: Atlanta Founders Forum. AI Beyond the Hype, Part 1: Turn AI into ROI
September 24: Private logistics technology company. Full-day AI training in the Sacramento area
September 28: Build My AI Team Live. I walk you through building your own AI employees in real time (join the waitlist)
October 2: Private construction company. On-site AI employee build in South Florida
October 7: EO Tulsa. AI Beyond the Hype: Part 1, Turn AI into ROI
October 8: EO Oklahoma City. AI Beyond the Hype: Part 1, Turn AI into ROI
October 20: EO Fort Worth. AI Beyond the Hype Part II: Build Your Digital Dream Team
October 29: EO New Jersey. AI Beyond the Hype Part II: Build Your Digital Dream Team That Works While You Sleep
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