ChatGPT plugins for local business

ChatGPT has a plugin directory again. A local business can now be something a customer uses inside the conversation: a question answered from your real service list, a quote request sent to you. We build and submit plugins for local businesses, and for agencies whose clients are asking for one.

What a ChatGPT plugin is

OpenAI replaced ChatGPT's app directory with a Plugin Directory in July 2026. A plugin connects ChatGPT to a system outside it. For a business, that means ChatGPT can stop piecing an answer together from web pages and ask your own system: do you grind stumps, do you cover Lakewood, how does someone request a quote.

Under the name there's a small server that speaks an open standard called MCP, the tools that server offers, a directory listing, and a review by OpenAI before anything is published.

What it can do for a local business

• Answer service and area questions from your own list, where a directory with old details can't get in the way.
• Ask what you'd ask on the phone before quoting: what kind of job, how big, how soon.
• Take a quote request and send it to you with those answers attached.

OpenAI also has a local-services feature in beta that puts a Get Quote button on a business's card inside ChatGPT. It's open to approved partners, by application. We can't promise that button to anyone.

What OpenAI requires

• A verified publisher: a person or a business, confirmed with OpenAI.
• A server on a domain you can prove you control.
• A privacy policy, terms, a support page and a website.
• Five test cases that should work, three that should be refused, and a recorded walkthrough.
• A review. OpenAI publishes no timeline for it.

There are rules on what a plugin may do. It can't sell services or subscriptions inside ChatGPT. Its tools can't ask for a street address or an exact location, so the address is taken on a form or on the call. Some kinds of business are prohibited outright.

What Lehvel does

1. We write down your facts: services, the towns you cover, hours, what you don't do. It's the same record your website and Google listing should already agree with.
2. We build the server and its tools from that record.
3. We test it with you in ChatGPT's developer mode before anyone else sees it.
4. We prepare the listing, the test cases and the walkthrough, and submit it for review.
5. When your facts change, the plugin changes with them.

This is new work. The directory opened in July 2026 and we're building our first plugins now. If that's too early for you, step one is worth doing anyway. Those facts are what ChatGPT reads today, plugin or not.

What we won't promise

That OpenAI approves it, or when. That ChatGPT picks your plugin when someone asks for a roofer. That it brings in a set number of leads. OpenAI decides what gets listed and what gets shown, and nobody outside OpenAI controls that.

If you run an agency

Some of your local clients will ask for this. One plugin takes a server, a verified publisher, a listing and a review, and then it has to be kept current. We can be the team that builds and maintains them behind your agency.

Questions

Talk to us about a plugin for your business.