Days after OpenAI announced its new Apps feature, which lets third party experiences run natively inside ChatGPT through MCP, I was eager to prove what a Realtor.com experience could look like in that surface. Working alongside a small team on a one week target, we set out to ship a real, clickable concept instead of a slide deck.

The idea was that, instead of acting like a generic text bot, ChatGPT could answer home shopping questions by calling Realtor.com MCP tools and rendering a lightweight embedded UI. Users could search listings conversationally, inspect individual homes, compare options, estimate payments, and check commute times, all powered by Realtor.com data and widgets rendered right inside the conversation.

We split the work to move quickly. The team built a Flynn and FastMCP backend, with auditing, auth support, and paved path integrations, and I focused on the frontend, building a Vite and React wrapper that emulated how the app would behave inside ChatGPT. That wrapper turned out to be a useful unlock for everyone, letting us build and test full workflows without needing a ChatGPT account wired up for every run.

The Apps feature was brand new at the time, with very little documentation to lean on, so a lot of it came down to the team figuring things out together as we went. Getting a working POC up in a week was really a credit to that collaboration. Because we had a real, working app so quickly, leadership was able to approach OpenAI and push for Realtor.com to be an early launch partner, turning a brand new platform from a hypothetical into a concrete opportunity.