The OpenAI Launch Nobody's Talking About (ChatGPT Skills)

Today I break down a big news item I think is flying under the radar: OpenAI quietly launched Skills for Codex, and I explain what that means (and how it differs from sub-agents and MCPs). I then share a fast-moving trend I’m watching and why it’s a strong wedge for a simple app. After that, I recommend the to-do app I’ve used for 14 years and give away a startup idea. I close with a practical 6-step framework for going from idea → viral validation → mobile app launch in 2026. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro: the new format (news, trend, app, startup idea, framework) 00:40 – AI New Item: OpenAI launches Skills for Codex 05:45 – Trend: Face Yoga 07:56 – App Recommendation: Things 09:33 – Startup Idea: Call-an-expert service for non-developers stuck at 80% done 14:44 – Framework: Viral Mobile App Framework Key Points OpenAI “Skills” make Codex/ChatGPT more reusable and consistent by packaging repeatable workflows. A “skill” is the recipe, a “sub-agent” is extra worker instances, and an “MCP” is the tool access plug. Face yoga is an emerging sub-niche with clear app potential (simple routines, monetization via paid or ads). Last 20 is a practical marketplace idea: pay for 15 minutes of expert unblock help to finish the last 20%. Viral validation favors apps that are visually obvious, explainable in three words, and tied to insecurity-driven outcomes. Numbered Section Summaries OpenAI Skills: The Quiet Upgrade I walk through OpenAI’s launch of Skills for Codex—reusable bundles of instructions/scripts/resources that can be called directly or chosen automatically. I’m excited because this makes agent workflows more consistent and scalable across tasks. The Foundation: Skill vs Sub-Agent vs MCP I clarify the taxonomy: a skill is the written playbook, sub-agents are extra “worker” copies of the model that split a big job, and MCPs are what let the model access external systems like tickets or repos. This is the mental model I want everyone using going into 2026. The Trend: Face Yoga As An App Wedge I share a niche trend I’m seeing—face yoga—and why it’s a product opportunity similar to how yoga apps became huge. I call out the obvious app angles: guided routines, jawline/face-slimming programs, and content-driven growth via short videos. The Tool: Things (My Simple Focus System) I recommend the Things to-do app because it’s simple: “Today,” “Upcoming,” and “Someday,” without a monthly fee. I also note what’s missing (I’d like more AI features), but it still wins for focus if you don’t want a “kitchen sink” system. The Startup Idea: Last 20 (Phone-A-Friend For Vibe Coders) I give away the idea: builders get stuck at 80% after using Cursor/Replit/V0, so Last 20 matches them with someone who’s solved that exact wall before. The product is a fast screen-share session—problem solved—priced per session or bundled for teams/agencies, with the marketplace taking a cut. The Distribution Framework: Viral Validation → Launch I share a 6-step process: warm up the account, design a visually obvious app, build a tiny MVP fast, post daily until something hits, build the community before the product, then launch with a hard paywall and keep content rolling. It’s a simple playbook for getting to organic traction in 2026. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  What's up everyone, welcome to the Startup Ideas Podcast. Today is December 22nd. I'm going to talk about a huge news item. OpenAI quietly launched something not a lot of people are talking about. I'm going to talk about one trend you could take advantage of, build a business around. I'm going to talk about one app that I'm using that, you know, I think you should too. I'm going to talk about one startup idea and just give it away to you. And at the end, I'm going to give you a mobile app framework. So you can actually go and build a mobile app in 2026. And that's today's episode.

• 0:39Greg Isenberg?

  So the news item I want to talk about that I don't think a lot of people are talking about is quietly, OpenAI has launched Skills. So we've seen Anthropic and Claude Skills, a lot of people talking about that, including myself, how amazing it is. But quietly, we have Codex now officially supports Skills. Skills are reusable bundles of instructions, scripts and resources that help Codex complete specific tasks. You can call a skill directly with dollar sign, dot, skill name, or let Codex choose the right one based on your prompts. So what's really cool is they're just following the agent skills I/O standard, the one by Anthropic.

• 1:22Greg Isenberg?

  A skill is just a folder, basically an MD, a skill.md file for instructions and metadata. And all of a sudden, your ChatGPT and Codex has just become a lot more valuable. So there's a tons, tons of ways that you're going to be able to use agent skills within Codex or ChatGPT. You know, it gives some examples here in the official announcement. Some technical stuff because it's talking about Codex specifically, but like a Notion spec to implementation skill. A have Codex read and update your linear tickets skill.

• 2:03Greg Isenberg?

  Have Codex automatically fix your GitHub CI failures skill. So it does a lot of things and. You know, I think a lot of people don't really understand the difference between what is a skill, what is a subagent and what is an MCP. So just to, you know, give everyone a little bit of a foundation, a skill is like a written guide that tells, you know, Claude or, you know, Codex or ChatGPT exactly how to do a specific task. For example, analyze spreadsheets this way, or write emails in this voice, or design, uh, you know, design the interface like this. So you can basically call and reuse the same skill again.

• 2:44Greg Isenberg?

  Um, and it just, it allows for more consistent output. So what is a subagent? Well, a subagent is making a few extra copies of, you know, the LLM that you're using, you know, Claude or Codex or ChatGPT, each with its own jobs, such as you review the code, you write tests, you update docs. The main, the main LLM can hand out pieces of a big task to help these workers. So work happens in parallel and stays organized. And an MCP is just a universal power plug that lets the LLM access other tools. Like we saw, uh, that, you know, it's going to update your linear tickets. Well, it needs access to that and that's through MCPs.

• 3:27Greg Isenberg?

  So highly encourage everyone kind of, you know, plays around with this. Um, you can, you can see over here, uh, on agentskills.io, I'll include it in the show notes. It kind of explains a little more about what, uh, what agent skills are. It says here, it's an open format, a simple open format for giving agents new capabilities and expertise. Agent skills are folders of instructions, scripts and resources that can discover and use to do more, more accurately and efficiently. And who doesn't want that? It says how, you know, what an agent skill can enable. Uh, domain expertise, so package specialized knowledge into reusable instructions from legal review processes to data pipelines.

• 4:11Greg Isenberg?

  New capabilities where you can give agents, you know, new capabilities like creating presentations or building MCP servers, uh, repeatable workflows, interoperability. So, uh, yeah, there's a lot there. There's some example skills that they give as well on GitHub. And I just think that not, not a lot of people are talking about it. So I had to, I had to let you know about it. So that's the one news item that I think you should be paying attention to. That, that could be super valuable for you in 2026. If you have a business that's doing at least $50,000 a month in revenue, I've got something interesting for you. It's called Offline Mode.

• 4:54Greg Isenberg?

  It's a two day event that me and my team are putting on at a 20,000 plus foot, square foot mansion. Yes, this is what it looks like on January 23rd and January 24th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'll include a link in the description if you're interested in coming. But it's basically for people who have a business that's kind of cranking, but they really want to put it in rocket ship mode. They want to create a set of businesses that generate tons of money, tons of cash flow, tons of product market fit, tons of impact. But they're not just quite there yet. It's also about, you know, making your business AI first. How you can actually, you know, build not just one product, but multiple products. And you're going to leave with, you know, tactical answers to your questions.

• 5:39Greg Isenberg?

  So if that's you and this sounds interesting, I'll see you there. So that's the news item. The, the trend that I've been hearing about is, is something called face yoga. I don't know if you've heard about it, but if you go, I'm going to go onto Idea Browser and just check the trend, face yoga. You know, I'm sure you've heard of yoga, obviously. But people are doing these like face yoga techniques to, to get slimmer faces. And there's a lot of opportunity here if you want to create different apps.

• 6:22Greg Isenberg?

  Cause there are, you know, a ton of opportunities, you know, in yoga, right? There's people making millions of dollars a year with these yoga apps. But face yoga is kind of a sub niche that I think is interesting. And is getting a ton of volume, you know, you're seeing, you know, 110,000 searches in August. The average GPC is about a dollar, the competition is low. And I just think that you're gonna see, yeah, I think there's an opportunity to build products, apps, you know, around face workouts, facial exercises, face yoga, facelifting yoga exercises, jawline trainer, face slimming exercises.

• 7:05Greg Isenberg?

  So there's a lot of opportunity here, a trend I never heard of, but face yoga. Face yoga involves facial exercises, stretches, massage to tone facial muscles, potentially reducing signs of aging, like wrinkles and sagging by firming the skin, much like body yoga strengthens muscles, offering a natural and holistic way to improve facial definition. You can even see here, people are creating YouTube videos on it. 10-minute cheek lift, face yoga tone, right? Like, there's an opportunity to build an app that's, you know, just some of these exercises and you can charge for it. Or make it free and do advertising or sponsorship, so.

• 7:49Greg Isenberg?

  Face yoga, a trend I have recently heard of that, hey, might get your creative juices flowing. One app that I wanted to talk about, that I've been using literally for 14 years. And, you know, some of you have heard of this one. It's the Things To Do List app. So it's by a company called Culture Code, not affiliated with them at all. And it's the To Do List app. People often ask me, like, how do I, how do I stay focused? How do I, you know, because I'm working on multiple companies and, and a lot of people work for, you know, with me and stuff like that.

• 8:30Greg Isenberg?

  And I keep everything in to-do list and it's just, sorry, into things, not to-do list, as my to-do list. And what I like about it, it has like what I'm focusing on today, what is my upcoming? And what is something I want to do someday? And it isn't a monthly fee, it's just like a one time fee. There is some stuff to be desired here, I will say, like I could use some AI features and stuff like that. But overall, if you're looking for like a simple to do list app, I just find this things to be the simplest, the simplest one there.

• 9:09Greg Isenberg?

  And I've tried other things, I've tried more intense ones, ones that are on like the GTD framework and sort of more, yeah, like kind of more the kitchen sink type app, but I don't know, I always come back to things, does what I need to do. And I recommend it, I recommend it for people who are looking for a simple to do list app. Let's give away a startup idea. So the startup idea of today is, is one that was on the, like, you know, here you can check here. Every day for the last 24 days, we've been giving away a free startup idea.

• 9:50Greg Isenberg?

  Here's day 22, I'll include the link in the show notes if you wanna, you get these ideas for free, you just gotta claim them. So today's idea I really like, it says, call an expert service for non-developers stuck at 80% done. So how many of us have built a vibe coded app and are like 80% of the way there? We use things like, you know, Cursor or Replit or V0. And then we kind of just give up. So the idea is something called Last 20. Last 20 is a phone a friend for builders who are almost there. Upload your code, describe the block, get matched with an expert who's hit that wall before and knows the way around it. 15 minutes on a screen share, that's it, problem solved.

• 10:33Greg Isenberg?

  Basically hire a vibe coder, ship it, maybe you charge $15 to $50 per session. Or maybe you do a yearly thing for agencies, maybe it's like $100 to $500 a year who can't afford stalled client work. Experts set their rates, so you basically create this marketplace and then you charge a percentage, maybe it's 5, 10, 15%. So many of us are becoming vibe coders, right? There's literally millions of us, but we're, you know, at the end of it, we're kind of just like, ah, how do I do this one thing? And there's so many, you know, I think this is so true. There's so many YouTube comments of people being like, how do I do this? Agency Slack channels asking, has anyone shipped this integration for?

• 11:17Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, so here is the, the main, you know, hire a vibe coder, phone a friend opportunity. And if you look at the search data, it's absolutely beautiful. You know, AI helpers, AI tutors, all this sort of stuff is just going up into the right. And I think that's why it's such a huge opportunity. It scored a nine on 10. The problem is a severe pain. I don't think it's, you know, the feasibility is a five on 10, like it's not that hard to do. And the why now, nine on 10, perfect timing. So, um, you know, I think, I always check the, the value letter and idea browser is

• 11:58Greg Isenberg?

  just to get your creative juices flowing around how you can actually go and build this, uh, this product. So I would start with like a lead magnet around an AI project roadblock guide with, with the goal just to get people's email addresses, get their phone numbers. Then you do a front end offer, so freemium access to an AI help tool. Then the core offer, expert help sessions, you do like a pay per session access to expert advice. And then eventually you layer on the annual subscription, offering priority access and additional features. Um, and then eventually you do the agency thing, right? You do the enterprise package. So I think this is sort of the ladder.

• 12:40Greg Isenberg?

  And, uh, you know, the key stages here, just like why like the value letter, I've talked about this before, but it's basically you give free value to build trust and capture leads. That's the, uh, the guide. You do the front end offer, which is like a low ticket product to convert leads to buyers. That's that freemium access to an AI help tool. So maybe it's like a Chrome extension that allows users to capture AI project issues and submit them to experts. And I know someone's like, oh, Chrome extension, it's gonna be so hard to create. Well, with Cursor and things like that, you know, it, it, it's not out of the realm of possibility to create it.

• 13:19Greg Isenberg?

  And you can use, you know, you could, you probably can create something pretty lightweight that, that does this. And yeah, so I, overall, I think this is an interesting idea. I think the, I think it would, it would do quite well. And I hope someone takes it. I hope someone does it. And please let me know how it goes and as you build it.

• 13:45Greg Isenberg?

  Cause I would, I would actually use this. You can even, by the way, just do this idea for like one product. So Replit has Replit Bounties, which is sort of this idea where you can hire someone to help you with Replit. But this is basically Replit Bounties for all the different vibe coding tools. Cursor, V0, you, you name it. So you can even just do like v0bounties.com. Or just focus on one platform or cursor, cursorhelp.com or textacursor,

• 14:21Greg Isenberg?

  textacursorcoder or something like that, dot com. I do think that last 20 is like a very catchy name. So, so I do think someone should take that idea. But thinking about doing this on one particular channel first, one particular platform, and then eventually expanding this to all the different vibe coding tools. I think that's, that's the move. We're gonna end this episode with a framework. This is a framework I saw on Instagram by a account called Builder Cult. So it, it's basically, here's the six step playbook to viral validation. So let's just talk about, you know, if you're building an app, how can you get viral validation?

• 15:04Greg Isenberg?

  So the first step is warm up your account. So you sign up to an Instagram account, you sign up to a TikTok account, war- warm it up, watch videos in your niche every single day of the week, comment, like, share, follow like-minded creators, and this prevents shadow bands. So many people just create a brand account and then start posting stuff, and it's not, you know, not really working. Well, it's not really working because the platforms are trying to prevent shadow bands. Step two is to design the idea. So you, you know, your app must have one visually heavily, visually heavy element. Example, pimple popping.

• 15:47Greg Isenberg?

  Must be explainable in three words. Track your acne. This is just an example. And must solve a fundamental, fundamental human insecurity. Lose weight, productivity, height, class, this sort of thing, right? So you want to, the, the apps that do the best are just sort of the, the simplest apps that you can explain so simply that, you know, just in a few words, that you can, very important, have one visually heavy element, because that's going to be helpful when you're creating organic content that you hope to go viral. Step three is to build the simplest MVP you can. So do something like literally three screens minimum, embarrassing, embarrassingly simple. Give yourself two to three days to build it.

• 16:32Greg Isenberg?

  You can use, you know, roork.app, that's a mobile app builder. You can use anything.com, that's a mobile app builder. You can use vibecode app, that's a mobile app builder. But yeah, give yourself a couple of days, iterate on it, show it to friends, show it to people, DM it to people, and get their, get their feedback. Post, step four is post daily until one goes viral. That's the goal. So you're going to want to create one video per day for 30 days minimum, or four videos per week. You're going to want to test different angles of the same app idea, and hopefully one will catch. They say in this, one will catch. That's not true. Not necessarily it will catch in 30 days.

• 17:13Greg Isenberg?

  It might take you 60, 90, 120, but you know, it's shots on net. But you'll know when one hits because the comments will explode. Step five is to build the community before the product. So you have this like waitlist, right? So you create a Discord. They say Telegram. I'm not a huge fan of Telegram. Discord, WhatsApp for the waitlist or an email newsletter for the waitlist. Post updates like building the app. Here's what I'm adding. This keeps early believers engaged while you're building it and you're iterating and converts into day one users. And then finally, launch the app. Once it's secure and stuff like that. Finalize features, convert the Rourke or anything or vibe code app into a full-fledged product using cloud code.

• 17:58Greg Isenberg?

  Launch with a hard paywall, something like superwall.com. Post content daily, you know, different angles, same value. And then hopefully scale from zero to 10K. MRR, purely organic. So that is today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm trying this new format where I'm giving a news item, a trend, an app, a startup idea, a framework, all the alpha to give you the highest probability of winning because I want to see you win in 2026. If you've gotten to this far, please, please like and comment and subscribe. Share this with a friend. I read every single comment that you write, so I will see you in there.

• 18:41Greg Isenberg?

  And yeah, have a creative day, my friends, and I'll see you next time.