An indie GPT directory with vector search and a browser sidecar

What it does

GPTs Works is a third-party store for OpenAI’s custom GPTs. It bundles a Next.js website for browsing listings, a Python/FastAPI index service that powers vector search over GPT descriptions via Zilliz Cloud, and a Plasmo-based browser extension that injects third-party GPT results next to ChatGPT’s native Explore page. Data is stored in Postgres and embeddings are generated through Azure OpenAI.

The interesting bit

The project treats OpenAI’s GPT ecosystem like an app store that needs an alternative indexer. The vector search backend is exposed as an API and even consumed by its own custom GPT, meaning the store can be queried from inside ChatGPT itself. The browser extension is the cheekiest part: it effectively turns ChatGPT’s own interface into a billboard for competing listings.

Key highlights

• Full-stack TypeScript/Python monorepo: Next.js frontend, FastAPI indexer, Plasmo extension.
• Semantic search via text-embedding-ada-002 stored in Zilliz Cloud.
• Self-hostable on Vercel with Postgres for metadata.
• Browser extension overlays third-party GPTs alongside ChatGPT’s official Explore page.
• Includes a meta-GPT that queries the index system from within ChatGPT.

Caveats

• The README is mostly a quickstart; architecture details and data-update strategies are unclear.
• You must source your own GPTs data (the project credits GPTs Hunter for seed data) and manually load the browser extension in Chrome.
• Running the stack requires accounts and credentials for Vercel Postgres, Azure OpenAI, and Zilliz Cloud.

Verdict

Worth a look if you want to bootstrap a niche search engine or directory around LLM plugins without waiting for platform APIs. Skip it if you were hoping for a turnkey, populated marketplace—this is a scaffold, not a product.