OpenAI Unveils New APIs and Tools for Agent Development

OpenAI has launched a set of APIs and tools to simplify the development of AI agents and to help developers and enterprises build reliable and useful autonomous systems. The company defines agents as systems that independently perform tasks on behalf of users.

“2025 is going to be the year of the agent,” said Kevin Weil, chief product officer, OpenAI. “It’s the year that ChatGPT and our developer tools go from just answering questions to actually doing things for you out in the real world.”

OpenAI announced in a live stream the launch of the Responses API, built-in tools for web search, file search, and computer use, an Agents SDK, and observability tools for workflow execution. These tools streamline agent logic, orchestration, and interactions.

The newly introduced tools are available to developers starting today. OpenAI stated that pricing for the Responses API follows standard token and tool usage rates. 

The Responses API allows developers to leverage OpenAI’s built-in tools for building agents. It integrates features from the Chat Completions API and the Assistants API, offering a unified solution for handling complex tasks. “With a single Responses API call, developers will be able to solve increasingly complex tasks using multiple tools and model turns,” OpenAI said.

Developers using the Responses API will have access to built-in tools, including web search, which retrieves up-to-date information with citations, file search for querying large document volumes, and computer use for automating browser-based tasks. 

“During early testing, we’ve seen developers build with web search for a variety of use cases including shopping assistants, research agents, and travel booking agents,” the company said.

OpenAI also introduced the Agents SDK, an evolution of Swarm for agent orchestration. Ilan Bigio, an engineer on OpenAI’s developer experience team, said the SDK simplifies complex agent interactions and includes features like monitoring, tracing, and built-in guardrails. “The idea with the Agents SDK is to keep simple ideas simple to implement while allowing you to build more complex and robust ideas,” Bigio said.

“The Agents SDK has enabled companies like Coinbase to quickly prototype and deploy AI agents,” OpenAI said.

The company has also addressed changes to its existing APIs. Chat Completions will continue to be supported, while the Responses API will serve as its superset. OpenAI plans to deprecate the Assistants API in mid-2026, providing a migration path to the Responses API.

The company plans to roll out additional capabilities in the coming months.