ChatGPT plugins may absorb SaaS apps, from CapCut to Apps SDK
Andrew Wilkinson argues ChatGPT plugins absorb software into the chat interface and then cut it out, as the post maps OpenAI's Apps SDK and Anthropic's MCP Apps ecosystems and audit risks.
"CapCut doesn't need to exist." Andrew Wilkinson said that about his own portfolio company's software this week, after CapCut announced a ChatGPT plugin at CapCut World LA. His argument: Claude and ChatGPT plugins integrate your software into their interface, train users to work that way because it's genuinely a better experience, then quietly cut you out. The mechanism is already live, not theoretical. OpenAI's Apps SDK shipped pilot apps with http://Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify and Zillow, with DoorDash, Instacart, Uber and Target queued up next. ChatGPT now suggests an app mid conversation, Zillow for a house hunting question, and OpenAI pitches developers on reaching its 800 million weekly users. Anthropic answered on January 27 with MCP Apps, an open extension of its own protocol, launching with Asana, Box, Canva, Figma, Slack, http://monday.com, Hex, Clay and Amplitude, Salesforce's Agentforce 360 coming next. Microsoft and Google are running the same trade in reverse, pushing Copilot and Gemini into Word and Sheets rather than pulling Word and Sheets into the chat. Most analysts expect the two models to converge. Wilkinson's point is sharper than the usual "AI disrupts software." These aren't API integrations where your product still owns the interaction. A plugin inside Claude or ChatGPT means the model owns the conversation, your product just executes the task, and the user never has a reason to open your app again. Everest Group is already flagging the other side of that trade: running a third party's UI inside your agent raises the due diligence bar, since enterprises now have to audit what that sandboxed interface can see and touch. A lot of what passes for a SaaS product in 2026 is a UI wrapped around a database call, and that's exactly the layer getting commoditized first. http://Booking.com and Spotify can survive fine as a booking engine and a catalog sitting behind someone else's interface. Companies whose entire value proposition was being the interface can't. The part people keep missing is that an API was never the moat. The relationship with the user was, and that's exactly the layer Claude and ChatGPT are now absorbing directly. https://x.com/awilkinson/status/2114501430241632281
This post quotes another post: x.com/awilkinson/status/2114501430241632281