That is a big change from a chat. In a chat you ask, the AI answers, and nothing happens until you ask again. A Dot takes the job and keeps going.

Here is what Dots are, who can use them today, and what they could mean for the marketing of a small business. Every fact below comes from OpenAI's announcement and the news coverage of it, linked at the end, checked on September 30, 2026.

What a Dot is

According to OpenAI and the coverage of the launch:

1. It works in the background. A Dot pursues a goal you set and keeps at it around the clock, with little oversight.
2. It has its own computer. Each Dot runs on its own cloud computer, and you can watch that computer while it works.
3. It connects to apps. Dots can reach more than 4,000 apps through the plugins in OpenAI's ecosystem.
4. It learns from feedback. You correct it, and it does better next time.
5. It asks when you want it to. You can set rules for when a Dot may act on its own and when it needs your approval.
6. You can reach it where you work. You message a Dot from ChatGPT, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and text messages are coming.

Dots run on GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI's newest model.

Who can use Dots today

Dots opened on September 29 for ChatGPT Pro and Business Premium users in eligible markets. The first Dot comes at no extra cost, and OpenAI says the first month of use does not count toward your plan's limits. Enterprise workspaces can try Dots when an admin turns them on.

Two things to know before you plan around them:

• Not every country has them yet. ChatGPT Pro does not include Dots in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the UK at launch.
• The price may move. Bloomberg reports a new ChatGPT tier at $500 a month, and OpenAI says more Dots and more work per Dot can be added later. The terms after the first month have not been announced.

Dots also arrive three weeks after Meta launched Muse, its own personal agent, and a few months after Google showed Gemini Spark. Agents that work for you are becoming the next thing every big AI company sells.

What a small business could hand a Dot

Think of the work you do every week that follows the same steps. That is what an agent is good at. For marketing, that could be:

• Planning the week of posts. "Every Friday, look at how this week's posts did and plan next week, three posts in our voice."
• Answering the same questions. "When someone asks about prices or opening hours in a DM, answer, and pass anything else to me."
• The newsletter. "Once a month, turn our best posts into an email for our list and show it to me."
• A page for each offer. "When we run a promotion, make a landing page for it with a signup form."

An agent can only do this if it can reach the tools where the work happens. That is where connections come in.

The part that decides if it works: connections

An agent is only as useful as the apps it can reach. Dots reach apps through plugins in OpenAI's ecosystem, and those plugins are built on MCP, the open standard that lets AI apps use tools. A tool with an MCP server can be connected to ChatGPT today.

Postfjord has one. Connect it to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT can read your calendar and your numbers, write posts and emails, build landing pages and set up DM automations, all in your brand voice. See how it works.

To be clear about where we stand: we have not tested Postfjord with Dots yet, because Dots are not open where we are. Since Dots use the same plugins as ChatGPT, we expect the connection to carry over. We will update this post as soon as it is confirmed.

How to get ready for an agent

You do not need a Dot to start. What makes an agent useful is the same thing that makes a new employee useful: clear instructions and access to the right places.

1. Write down your voice. Three sentences on how you sound, and three posts you are proud of. An agent copies what it is shown.
2. Put your work in one place. Posts, emails, DMs and your link in bio page in one workspace, so an agent needs one connection instead of five.
3. Decide what needs your yes. Posting, sending an email and switching on an automation are good places to ask first. In Postfjord a connection has a level: read only, drafts only, or schedule and publish, and new automations always start paused.
4. Start in a chat. Connect Postfjord to ChatGPT or Claude and give it one job this week, like planning next week's posts. You will learn what to ask for before you hand anything to an agent.

FAQ

What is OpenAI Dots?

Dots are AI agents from OpenAI, launched on September 29, 2026. They work on a goal in the background around the clock, each on its own cloud computer, and connect to more than 4,000 apps through OpenAI's plugins.

How much does a Dot cost?

The first Dot is included for ChatGPT Pro and Business Premium users at no extra cost, and the first month of use does not count toward plan limits. OpenAI has not announced the terms after that.

Can I use Dots in Europe?

Not with ChatGPT Pro at launch: Pro does not include Dots in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the UK.

Can a Dot post to Instagram for me?

Only through an app it can connect to. Dots reach apps through OpenAI's plugins. Postfjord works as a plugin in ChatGPT today, and we will confirm here when it is tested with Dots.

Will a Dot post without asking me?

You decide. OpenAI says you can set rules for when a Dot acts on its own and when it needs your approval. In Postfjord you also choose what a connection may do, and new DM automations start paused.

Sources

• OpenAI, Introducing dots, September 29, 2026
• TechCrunch, OpenAI launches Dots, its bubbly agentic avatar, September 29, 2026
• 9to5Google, OpenAI launches Dots, new always-on agents you can assign tasks to, September 29, 2026
• PYMNTS, OpenAI launches Dots to capture AI agent market, September 2026
• Bloomberg, OpenAI unveils always-on AI agent Dots, new $500 paid tier, September 29, 2026

This guide walks through all three, with the button names as they appear on Meta's help pages when we checked them on September 28, 2026. Meta moves menus around now and then, so your phone may look a little different.

The short answer

• One post or reel, now and then: schedule it in the Instagram app. Tap More options, turn on Schedule this post, pick a time.
• Stories, or posts to Instagram and a Facebook Page together: use Meta Business Suite on a computer.
• Several networks, a team, or a full week planned in one sitting: use a scheduling tool.

What each route can schedule

Sources: Instagram Help Center, scheduled posts and reels, Meta Business Help Center, posts, stories and reels in Meta Business Suite, and Meta's developer docs for the Instagram API, checked September 28, 2026.

Route 1: schedule in the Instagram app

This is the fastest way for a single post. Instagram's help page says you need a public account, and that you can schedule up to 25 posts a day, up to 30 days in advance (Instagram Help Center).

1. Tap Create and choose Post or Reel.
2. Pick the photo or video and tap Next.
3. Add a caption, effects or filters.
4. Tap More options.
5. Turn on Schedule this post or Schedule this reel, then choose a date and time.
6. Tap Done, then Back, then Schedule.

To find it again, go to your profile, tap Menu, and under Your insights and tools tap Scheduled content. Tap Options next to a post to Delete, Edit post, Reschedule or Share now.

Meta lists a few things the app cannot schedule yet: product tagging, collaborative posts, sponsored posts and fundraisers. There is also no calendar view. You see a list, one post at a time, on your phone.

A quick example. A coffee shop in Portland wants its pumpkin spice post to go up Friday at 7 AM, when the first line forms. The owner writes it Thursday night, schedules it in the app in under two minutes, and goes to bed. For that one post, nothing more is needed.

Route 2: schedule in Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite is free and runs in a browser at business.facebook.com and in its own phone app. It can publish to your Facebook Page, your Instagram account or both at once. You need full control of the Page or Instagram account, or content permission for it.

Posts

These steps are from Meta's help page for posts on desktop:

1. Go to Meta Business Suite.
2. Click Create post, on the home page or in the Content tab.
3. Under Post to, pick your Instagram profile, your Facebook Page, or both.
4. Under Media, add your photos. The limit for Instagram is 10.
5. Write the caption.
6. Under Scheduling options, pick the date and time. Active times suggests times from when your followers were most active over the past 7 days.
7. Click Schedule.

Reels work the same way from Create reel. One catch from Meta's reel help page: you cannot make a reel from photos if it is going to Instagram.

Stories

This is the free way to schedule stories. From Meta's help page for stories:

1. Go to Meta Business Suite and click Create story.
2. Under Post to, pick your Instagram profile, your Facebook Page, or both.
3. Under Media, click Add photo/video. You can upload up to 10 photos or videos.
4. Click Edit to crop, trim a video, or add text, mentions or stickers. Click Add link to add a link.
5. Under Scheduling options, choose Schedule and pick the date and time.
6. Click Schedule.

Scheduled stories sit under Content, in the Stories tab, under Scheduled. The Planner shows your posts, stories and reels on a week or month calendar.

Where Business Suite falls short

Business Suite covers Instagram and Facebook well. It stops there. If you also post to LinkedIn, TikTok or YouTube, you plan those somewhere else. If a post does not go out, you have to notice it yourself.

Route 3: schedule with a tool

A scheduling tool connects to Instagram through Meta's official API and publishes for you. The trade: one calendar for every network, and stories without the Business Suite detour. Two limits come from Meta, and every tool has them:

• 100 posts in 24 hours per account. Meta caps what apps may publish per Instagram account (Meta developer docs). A small business will not get close.
• No stickers on stories. Meta's API does not publish link, poll or location stickers (Meta developer docs). If a story needs a poll or a link sticker, schedule that one in Business Suite or post it by hand.

Here is how it works in Postfjord, step by step.

1. Connect Instagram. Under Channels, connect the account. It needs to be a professional account (Business or Creator). It does not need a Facebook Page, see Instagram without a Facebook Page.
2. Open the composer. Press + next to a day in the calendar, or start a new post. Write the caption once. If Instagram needs hashtags and Facebook does not, write a variant on the Instagram tab (composer help).
3. Add media. One photo is a post. Two to 10 photos become a carousel. A single video becomes a reel.
4. Pick the format. For a story, set Format to Story on the Instagram channel. A story holds one photo or one video, and the caption is not shown on it.
5. Pick a time and schedule. The time follows the workspace time zone, set under Settings, General.
6. Check the result. The Posts list shows each post's status per channel. If Instagram turns a post down, you see the reason and a Retry button.

A yoga studio in Austin could plan its week on Sunday evening this way: a class schedule carousel for Monday, a reel of the new hot flow class for Wednesday, and a story at 6 AM every weekday that says which classes still have spots. That is seven Instagram items, and the same carousel goes to the Facebook Page with one extra click.

The scheduling page shows the calendar, and the pricing page has the plans. The Free plan covers 15 posts a month on 2 channels.

Which route to pick

• You post a few times a month, only on Instagram: the app is enough.
• You post stories with polls or link stickers, only on Instagram and Facebook: Meta Business Suite.
• You post to more networks, work with someone else, or plan a week at a time: a tool.

You can mix them. Plan the week in a tool, and post the odd poll story from Business Suite or the app.

Plan a week in one sitting

1. Pick three or four themes that come back every week. For a coffee shop: the drink of the week, the people behind the counter, a regular's order, and opening hours or events.
2. Block one hour a week, for example Sunday evening or Monday before opening.
3. Batch the work. Take the photos for several days in one go, then write all the captions in a row.
4. Leave room for the day itself. A last minute story about a sold out pastry still has a place.

Mistakes to avoid

• Scheduling and forgetting. When the post goes up, comments and DMs come in. Answer them the same day.
• The wrong time zone. Check the time zone in your tool, especially if you travel or your customers live in another one.
• The same caption everywhere. Change at least the first line for each network.
• Not checking the crop. Look at the image and the reel cover before you schedule.

FAQ

How do I schedule a post on Instagram from my phone?

In the Instagram app, create the post or reel, tap More options, turn on Schedule this post, choose a date and time, then tap Done, Back and Schedule. You can schedule up to 30 days ahead.

Can you schedule Instagram stories?

Not in the Instagram app. You can schedule them for free in Meta Business Suite, stickers and links included. Scheduling tools such as Postfjord can schedule them too, without stickers, because Meta's API does not publish them.

How many Instagram posts can I schedule?

In the app, up to 25 a day and up to 30 days ahead, according to the Instagram Help Center. Through Meta's API, which scheduling tools use, the limit is 100 posts in 24 hours per account. The Meta Business Suite help pages we checked list no daily limit.

Can I schedule Instagram posts for free?

Yes. The Instagram app and Meta Business Suite are free. Postfjord's Free plan covers 15 posts a month on 2 channels.

How do I edit a scheduled Instagram post?

In the app, open Scheduled content from your profile menu and tap Options to edit, reschedule, share now or delete. In Business Suite, open Content, find the post under Scheduled, and click the ... icon. In Postfjord, open the post from the calendar and change the text or the time before it goes out.

Do scheduled posts get less reach?

None of Meta's help pages that we read says a scheduled post reaches fewer people. What people do with the post in the first hours matters more than how it was published.

The short version

• Postfjord never stores your recording.
• The audio is sent to OpenAI once, to be turned into text, and OpenAI keeps none of it.
• Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic trains its models on it.
• Only the text you keep ends up in Postfjord.

The path, step by step

1. Your browser records. When you press Dictate, your browser asks for the microphone the first time. The recording lives in your browser's memory while you talk, for up to three minutes.

2. The audio goes to our server in the EU. When you press stop, the audio is sent over an encrypted connection to a Postfjord function in Google Cloud in Belgium. The function checks that you are signed in and a member of the workspace. It holds the audio in memory only. Nothing is written to our database or file storage.

3. OpenAI turns it into text. The function sends the audio to OpenAI's transcription service and gets the text back. For this service OpenAI's own documentation lists no retention for abuse monitoring and no stored application state: the audio is processed and not kept. OpenAI has not used data sent to its API for training since March 2023.

4. The text comes back to you. The text lands in the brief, the idea box or the email brief. The audio is gone from our side the moment the function finishes. What you save from there is ordinary Postfjord content, like any text you type.

5. Claude writes the post, if you ask. When you press Generate draft, the brief goes to Anthropic to write the draft, under terms that exclude training. That step is the same whether you typed the brief or said it.

Who can hear it

Nobody. There is no copy of the audio to play back, not for you, not for us, not for anyone in your workspace.

What it costs

A minute of dictation costs us about three tenths of a cent at OpenAI's list price. It comes out of your plan's monthly AI budget, the same budget as your drafts. At that price the budget runs out on drafts long before it runs out on dictation.

What we tell you in writing

OpenAI is listed as a provider in our privacy policy, next to the other services that process data for Postfjord. If a workspace has connected its own ChatGPT key under Settings, AI, dictation runs on that key instead, under the workspace's own agreement with OpenAI.

If anything here changes, the privacy policy changes first, and this post gets an update at the top.

A good brief takes twenty seconds to say. These five things make the difference.

1. Give the facts, all of them

Day, time, price, place, who will be there, how many spots. Claude never invents facts it was not given; when one is missing, the draft gets a placeholder like [time] that you have to fill in later. Say it once in the brief and it is right in every channel's version.

2. Say who it is for

"For people who have never set foot in a gym" and "for members training for their first race" are two different posts. Same gym, different hook, different words. One sentence about the reader changes the whole draft.

3. Say what you want people to do

Book a spot. Comment a word to get a link. Reply with their favourite. Come by the café before twelve. A post without a next step gets likes and nothing else. If you use comment-to-DM, name the keyword in the brief so the caption and the automation match.

4. Add one detail only you know

"The workshop dog greets every customer at the door." "Maria started here as an apprentice in 2014." "We roast the beans on Tuesdays, so Wednesday coffee is the best of the week." A detail like that is what makes a post sound like you. Claude cannot guess it, and it is the line people remember.

5. Name the tone only when it differs

Your brand voice already sets the tone for every draft. Add a tone only when this post should break from it: "shorter than usual", "more playful, it is Friday", "serious, this is about a price change". Otherwise leave it out and let the brand voice do its work.

Say it, do not type it

All five fit in one breath: "Saturday ten o'clock, free tasting in the new shop, a glass for the first twenty people, for everyone who has walked past and wondered, comment TASTE for the address, tell them the old bank vault is now the wine cellar." That is fifteen seconds with the Dictate button and a brief that gets a good first draft.

The brief lands as text before anything is written, so you can check the facts once. Then press Generate draft.

Try it once and you see the problem. You get exactly what you said: "so um tomorrow the the spring sale starts at nine and uh it's the last one before summer so come." Correct transcription. Useless caption.

A caption has a first line that stops the scroll, a point, and a next step. Speech has none of that. It wanders, repeats and restarts. The fix is two steps, not one.

Step one: speech to clean text

The first step turns your voice into text and cleans it up. Filler words go, false starts go, punctuation goes in. What is left is what you meant to say, in the language you said it in.

In Postfjord this is the Dictate button. It works in the browser on your phone and your laptop, takes up to three minutes, and puts the result in the brief so you can fix a name or a time before anything else happens.

Step two: clean text to a post

The second step is the writing. Claude takes the brief and writes the caption with a hook, the structure and a call to action. It uses your brand voice, built from your website and your own best posts, so the result sounds like the posts that already work for you. A generic assistant voice is the thing people scroll past.

It writes one version per channel. Instagram gets a longer, warmer caption with hashtags. Facebook gets a shorter one. You read both and change what you want.

What to say into the microphone

You do not have to talk like a caption. Talk like you would explain it to a colleague who is going to write the post for you:

• What is happening, with the facts: day, time, price, who.
• Who it is for.
• What you want people to do.
• The tone, if it matters: "warm", "short", "a bit funny".

"Saturday we open the new showroom, free coffee and ten percent off for the first twenty visitors, it is for everyone who followed the renovation, link in bio, keep it short." That is a brief Claude can do a lot with.

Where built-in dictation still wins

Replying to a friend on WhatsApp. Anything where the words you say are the words you want. For posts, where the words you say are raw material, the second step is the part that saves you the time.

Dictation is on every Postfjord plan, including Free. See how it works.

Postfjord now has a Dictate button. You talk, it writes the brief, Claude writes the post. Here is a routine that works for any small business, with a bike repair shop as the example, and what five minutes of talking gets you.

During the week: say the idea when you have it

Ideas show up at bad times. With oil on your hands. While you wait for the coffee machine. That is when you open Postfjord on your phone, go to Ideas and press Dictate.

Say it the way you would tell a colleague:

"A customer asked today how often a bike needs a service. Answer that. Once a year for most people, twice if you ride through the winter, and check the chain every month."

Thirty seconds. Press stop, and the text lands in the box. Save the idea. Do it four or five times over the week and you have covered most of what you wanted to say.

Sunday: Plan next week

On Sunday evening, open the calendar and press Plan next week. Claude reads your content pillars, your best time slots and the ideas you saved, and proposes a week of drafts.

Each draft is written in your brand voice, the one Postfjord built from your website and your own published posts. The idea about bike service becomes a post with a hook, the three rules and a question at the end, because that is how your best posts are built.

You read them, change what needs changing, and approve. The calendar publishes them in the slots where your posts have done best.

One post right now

Not every post can wait for Sunday. When something happens today, open New post, pick the channels and press Dictate next to the brief:

"Saturday we fix flat tyres while you wait, ten dollars, nine to twelve, no booking needed, make it friendly."

Press Generate draft. You get a version for Instagram and one for Facebook, each with the length and hashtags that fit the channel.

What the five minutes add up to

Five ideas at thirty to sixty seconds each is less than five minutes of talking. That is a week of posts, written in your voice, that you only had to read and approve.

The part that still needs you is checking the facts. Dictation writes names, times and prices the way it heard them, so read the brief before you generate. A wrong opening time costs more than a missing post.

Dictation is included on every plan, including Free. Read how it works.

Update, 19 September 2026. Prices are now in US dollars, since most of our customers are outside the EU: Solo is $25 a month or $19 billed yearly, Studio $59 or $49. Everything below still holds.

Update, 22 September 2026. Solo is now $39 a month or $29 billed yearly, and Studio $99 or $75. A fourth plan, Agency, is $249 or $189, for agencies and groups with many brands. Each plan does the work of a scheduler, a DM tool and an email tool, and is priced for that. The tiers still differ in volume only.

Per workspace pricing punishes the wrong people

Most schedulers charge per workspace or per "social set". That is fair for an agency with twenty clients and painful for one person with two small brands. Studio includes five workspaces because that is what a solo owner with a couple of projects, or a freelancer with a few clients, actually needs.

A budget, not credits

AI credits create a small anxiety every time you press the button, and they run out at the worst moment. We meter what a draft actually costs us (one to three cents) and give each plan a monthly budget worth hundreds of drafts. It is shared across every workspace you own and resets monthly. You never buy a top-up.

Active contacts follow the value

The one thing we do count is active contacts: people an automation replied to this month. That is the number that grows when your automations work, and it is the number that grows our costs. Free includes a hundred, Solo a thousand, Studio five thousand. Messages you answer yourself are never counted.

What stays free

Free is for finding out whether Postfjord fits: one workspace, two connected accounts, fifteen posts a month, one automation and enough AI for a few dozen drafts. No card, no time limit.

The full table is on the pricing page. Questions about a plan that does not fit: hello [at] postfjord.com.

What happens behind the scenes

1. Someone comments your keyword on the post.
2. Meta sends the comment to Postfjord within a second or two.
3. Postfjord matches it against your automations. Whole words only, so "guide" matches "the guide please" but not "misguided".
4. It replies publicly on the comment ("Sent you a DM!") so others see it works, then sends the private message.
5. If the message has buttons, the person's choice runs the next step.

The person never has to follow you first. Meta allows a business to reply privately to a comment on its own post, once, within seven days.

Setting it up

1. Open Automation and press New automation.
2. Trigger: Comment keyword. Type the keyword, pick the posts (or all posts).
3. Public reply: one short line that tells everyone the DM is on its way.
4. First step: your message and the link. Add up to three buttons if you want to ask a question.
5. Turn it on, comment the keyword on your own post from a second account, and watch the thread appear in the inbox.

Three things that make it work better

• Say the keyword in the caption and in the image. People comment what they can see.
• Ask one question with buttons. "Beginner or been at it a while?" doubles replies and tells you who your audience is.
• Leave the last word to a human. Turn on email alerts for new replies so a real conversation continues with you, not with a bot.

Opt-out is built in: STOP, unsubscribe and their equivalents in other languages end automation for that person for good.

The tools were fine. The bill was not: each one charged per workspace, per seat or per credit, so two small brands paid like a mid-sized agency. And none of them knew what the other one was doing. The scheduler had no idea a post had gone viral; the inbox had no idea what we had promised in the caption.

So we built one product that does all three, and we priced it the way we wished the others had: one price, everything included, only the volume differs.

What Postfjord does today

• A calendar that publishes to Instagram and Facebook, with retries and plain-language errors.
• An AI composer built on Claude that reads your website and your published posts before it writes a word.
• An inbox for DMs and comments, with the 24 hour window handled.
• Keyword and comment-to-DM automation with buttons and a built-in STOP.
• Analytics that answer "what works" and "when should I post".
• An MCP server so Claude Desktop can plan and draft in your workspace.

What comes next

LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube publishing, in that order, and a native app for the phone. Product updates show the bigger news as it ships.

If you run a small business or you are the business, try it free. Tell us what is missing at hello [at] postfjord.com.