Anthropic’s launch artwork for Claude Duet. Image: Anthropic
Most chatbots wait for you to type. Claude Duet messages you first. Anthropic opened a research preview of the new app on October 21, describing it as a proactive agent that sends you a brief each morning, works through tasks in the background and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.
Anthropic says it built Duet for “professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track”, and designed it around Claude Opus 5.5. For now it is open only to Pro and Max subscribers in the US, through a waitlist.
A morning brief, then quiet #
Each morning Duet sends a short summary of what matters most across your connected apps. Through the day it checks those accounts every few hours and messages you only when something needs you. Checking nonstop, Anthropic says, would eat through usage limits much faster.
You can also hand it work by text or voice in one ongoing thread, from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, financial or sales forecasts, prototypes and web apps. Duet runs on a virtual machine in the cloud with its own browser, so your laptop or phone doesn’t need to stay on, and it sends a notification when a task is done or needs review.
It carries over the memory, skills and connected apps from your Claude account, and can use the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. Anthropic’s examples include chasing unpaid invoices in QuickBooks and preparing payroll in Gusto.
“I don’t need to open up 100 tabs” #
Amin Ebrahimi, who owns Shahs of Kabob in South Florida and has about 110 employees, has used Duet for accounting, customer support and marketing:
It brings it all together. I don’t need to open up 100 tabs.
Amin Ebrahimi, owner, Shahs of Kabob
Jess Provencher, a broker who owns Pro Homes, said Duet flagged a property showing that was on her calendar for the wrong day without being asked, “exactly the kind of thing I want caught without having to ask”. Those accounts come from Anthropic’s own announcement and haven’t been independently checked.
It asks before it pays #
Duet reads, drafts and prepares work on its own, but before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits for your approval. Some things are off-limits even with approval, including trading securities and moving money between accounts. Purchases go through Link, Stripe’s digital wallet, which asks you to approve the spend and pays with a virtual card so your real card number isn’t shared.
Anthropic says Duet never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens, and that its actions are vetted by the auto mode classifier it uses in Claude Code, the safeguard it pointed to after a developer said Opus 5.5 wiped his C: drive. A new classifier refuses to share the most sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and government ID, and lets health or personal finance details through only when you have explicitly told Duet to send them. Red teams and an outside firm penetration tested it. Rival agents show why that matters: Meta’s Muse gave a stranger a user’s home address while selling his keyboard.
Who can get it, and where #
Duet is a standalone app for iOS and Android, and works on the web at claude.ai. It comes with Claude Pro ($20 a month in the US, or $17 a month billed annually) and Max (from $100 a month) at no extra charge, but shares the plan’s usage limits, and its background checks count against them. Team and Enterprise plans aren’t included yet.
The preview starts in the US only. Anthropic hasn’t said when it will reach the UK, Canada, Germany and the rest of the EU, Australia or anywhere else. It also warns that Duet may misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent, and can’t yet show you its browser.
Unlike Claude Cowork, which turns tasks you start into finished files, or Claude Tag, which works in Slack threads for Team and Enterprise customers, Duet is built to come to you. Rivals are heading the same way: OpenAI pitched always-on agents at DevDay, and Meta’s Muse can already shop, book and send emails for you.
Why it matters #
Duet is Anthropic’s clearest move yet from a chatbot you visit to an assistant that watches your inbox, calendar and accounts all day. The hard part isn’t the tasks but the judgment: whether it interrupts at the right moments, and whether small business owners trust it with their email and their money.
Sources: Anthropic (announcement), Anthropic (Claude Duet product page).