If your team already pays for OpenAI ChatGPT, you can now link that account to your Dawn workspace. The OpenAI models available on your ChatGPT plan show up as a normal provider choice in Dawn, and runs on that path do not consume Dawn credits.
How to Set It Up
The workspace owner opens Workspace settings, goes to the AI Providers tab, and finds the ChatGPT section. From there, the flow is a standard device-link verification: copy a one-time code, open the verification URL in a browser, sign in to OpenAI, approve the link, and return to Dawn. The whole process takes about a minute.
You do not need to create a separate API key or manage any credentials manually. The link is between your OpenAI account and your Dawn workspace — Dawn handles the rest. There is no key to paste, rotate, or store anywhere.
Once the link succeeds, the ChatGPT section shows the linked account status. Agent profiles can then select from the OpenAI models available through that linked account, and those models appear alongside any other providers the workspace has configured.
What Changes After Linking
The practical difference is that OpenAI models from the linked ChatGPT account show up as available options in agent settings. When an agent uses one of those models, the run is handled through the linked account rather than Dawn-managed credentials, so it does not consume Dawn credits.
Everything else works the same. Conversations, memory pages, connected sources, skills — all of it functions identically regardless of which provider path is backing the model. A user talking to an agent would not know whether the response came from a linked ChatGPT model, a BYOK key, or Dawn-managed credits. The experience is the same.
The models available through the linked account depend on your ChatGPT plan. Whatever models your plan includes show up in Dawn. If your plan is upgraded later, the new models become available without any reconfiguration on the Dawn side.
How This Is Different from Bring Your Own Key
Yesterday’s post covered Bring Your Own Key — adding workspace-level API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter. The linked ChatGPT path is a separate flow that serves a different need.
BYOK uses an API key that lives on the workspace. Anyone who manages the workspace can see that a key is configured, and the key works regardless of who the workspace owner is. It is a workspace-level resource.
The linked ChatGPT path is personal. It uses the workspace owner’s own OpenAI ChatGPT account. There is no API key to store — the connection is between the owner’s OpenAI identity and the Dawn workspace. That makes it simpler to set up but ties availability to a specific person.
Both paths can be active in the same workspace. A workspace could have an Anthropic API key through BYOK, an OpenRouter key through BYOK, and a linked ChatGPT account all at the same time. Different agents can use whichever path suits them.
Ownership Matters
The linked ChatGPT path is tied to whoever is currently the workspace owner. If workspace ownership transfers to someone else, Dawn re-evaluates whether the linked ChatGPT path is still available. The new owner needs to link their own ChatGPT account for that path to work again.
That is by design. Dawn does not carry over the previous owner’s linked account to someone new. The workspace configuration stays in place, but access to the linked ChatGPT models depends on the current owner having an active link.
In practice, this means workspace ownership transfers need a small follow-up step. The new owner links their ChatGPT account, and everything picks up where it left off. If the new owner does not have a ChatGPT account, agents that were using that path fall back to other available providers or Dawn-managed credentials.
Unlinking
If the workspace owner wants to disconnect the ChatGPT link, they can do that from the same ChatGPT section in AI Providers. Unlinking removes the connection immediately. Agents that were configured to use models from the linked account lose access to those models, but they do not break — they fall back the same way they would during an ownership transfer.
Relinking later is the same device-link flow as the first time. There is no penalty or cooldown for unlinking and relinking.
Three Paths, Three Purposes
Dawn now has three distinct ways to use provider models, and they are intentionally separate:
Linked ChatGPT account is for teams that already have an OpenAI ChatGPT subscription and want Dawn to use it directly. The link is owned by the workspace owner, not stored as a workspace key.
Bring Your Own Key is for teams that want to add workspace-level API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter. The keys are stored on the workspace and work independently of any personal account.
Dawn-managed credentials are the default. Dawn handles the provider relationship and charges runs to Dawn credits.
All three can coexist in the same workspace. Different agents can use different paths depending on what makes sense for the team.
Getting Started
The guides for each path are here: