On Wednesday, October 21, Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet, a standalone app where Claude acts as a proactive agent: instead of waiting for you to ask, it checks your connected apps, tells you when something needs your attention, and keeps working after you put your phone down. That's how the company describes it in its official announcement. An agent, in this context, is a model that plans steps and carries them out with tools rather than just answering. For now it's limited to Pro and Max subscribers in the US, through a waitlist.
How it works
Every morning, Duet sends a short brief with the most important items from your connected apps, and during the day it checks those accounts every few hours, messaging you only when it needs to. You decide what you want to hear about and how often. You talk to it by text or voice in a single thread, and according to the help center, you can open separate channels by topic that share the same memory.
It doesn't run on your device. It works on a cloud virtual machine with its own browser, so your laptop or phone can be off. It inherits the memory, skills, and connectors from your Claude account, and Anthropic says it can use more than 6,000 connectors and plugins from the Claude Marketplace. The announcement's examples range from admin work (digging up missed Gmail or Slack messages, checking QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and drafting reminders) to heavier jobs like dashboards, financial forecasts, or web app prototypes. Big jobs come back as editable files in the Make tab, and a Tasks tab tracks progress; only you can mark a task as done.
Under the hood is Claude Opus 5.5. You can't pick another model: the help center says Duet decides how much effort each job needs.
What it can do without you, and what it can't
Before it sends a message, pays for something, signs a document, or deletes anything, Duet shows you the exact action and waits for your approval. Some actions are off-limits even if you approve them, like trading securities or moving money between accounts. For purchases it uses Link, Stripe's digital wallet, or Shopify's Shop Pay. According to the Link guide, every purchase uses a one-time card that only works for that merchant and that amount, and Claude never receives your full card number. Link works only in the US and can't handle recurring payments.
Anthropic adds that the agent never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens, that a classifier reviews its actions, and that it has defenses against prompt injection (hidden text in an email or web page that tries to give the agent orders). The help center admits no defense is perfect, which is why the approvals exist.
The company is also upfront about the rough edges. Duet can misread a thread or misjudge what's urgent, and because it checks in at intervals, something urgent can reach you late. It's built for work more than personal errands like booking tickets, you can't watch its browser yet, and it can't make calls or send texts. Microsoft 365 shows up on the product page, but the help center says it isn't available yet.
