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Connect ChatGPT Desktop

When you finish, ChatGPT Desktop can search your library and build reels from it, the same way Claude Desktop does. This is the desktop app, not ChatGPT in a browser: only the desktop app can run ShotWork on your machine to do the searching.

Before you start

Steps

  1. Choose File › Connect an AI Assistant….
  2. Open the ChatGPT Desktop tab.
  3. Choose Connect.
  4. Read the confirmation, which names the settings file ShotWork is about to change.
  5. Choose Yes.
  6. Quit ChatGPT Desktop completely, then open it again. Closing its window is not quitting: quit it from the system tray on Windows or the menu bar on macOS. See The assistant cannot see your library if it still cannot.
  7. Ask it: What's in my ShotWork library?

Ask in the right place

ChatGPT Desktop runs local programs such as ShotWork's server only in its work and Codex modes, the modes for working on files and projects on your computer, not in an ordinary chat. If it says it has no such tool, ask in one of those instead.

What happens

ShotWork adds one entry to ChatGPT Desktop's own settings file, saying how to start ShotWork's library server. That file is shared with the Codex command-line tool and the editor extension, and also carries your model settings, your trusted projects and your other tools; ShotWork changes only its own entry and leaves every comment and every other setting untouched. If the file cannot be read, ShotWork refuses to change it rather than guess.

ChatGPT asks ShotWork the same things Claude Desktop does, and ShotWork applies the same checks to every answer; see What it never does. What ChatGPT receives is the same text Claude Desktop receives: names, tags, ratings, notes and fields, never footage.

Disconnect

Disconnect on the same tab removes ShotWork's entry and nothing else. Restart ChatGPT Desktop afterwards. Your other tools in that file are left alone.

Where ChatGPT Desktop keeps this setting
Platform File
Windows %USERPROFILE%\.codex\config.toml
macOS ~/.codex/config.toml

Set CODEX_HOME to move that folder; ShotWork follows it. Unlike Claude Desktop, the Microsoft Store build does not redirect this path, because it sits outside AppData.

The entry is a [mcp_servers.shotwork] table that starts ShotWork itself with --mcp-server. A tab says Connected. It can see your library. only when that entry points at this copy exactly, which is why an entry left over from an older install reads as not connected. Extra keys you add yourself, such as a startup timeout, are left alone and do not change that.