What Duet does
On October 21, Anthropic opened the research preview of Claude Duet, a standalone application for iOS, Android, and claude.ai in which the model operates as a proactive agent. According to the source, the product is designed for professionals and small business owners and is accessible through a waitlist reserved, for now, for Pro and Max plan subscribers in the United States.
The described operation is based on Claude Opus 5.5. Each morning, the agent sends a summary of tasks that require attention, drawn from connected email and calendar; it then continues to monitor connected apps and flags urgent matters without waiting for an explicit request. The indicated functions include scheduling meetings, building financial forecasts, and creating dashboards and web apps. Duet operates on a virtual computer in the cloud, so it continues working even when the user closes the application, and it comes back to ask for confirmation before taking actions.
Scope of action and security precautions
Its scope is broad: the agent connects to more than 6,000 connectors in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail and Slack, and can make online purchases through Stripe's Link wallet or Shopify's Shop Pay. Payments still require user approval; Duet does not trade securities or move money between accounts. Memory, skills, and connected apps come directly from the Claude account, reducing initial setup.
The security question weighs heavily, given access to personal and work data. Anthropic states that Duet never directly sees passwords and access tokens, that a new classifier checks every message to prevent leaks of sensitive information, and that, by default, the agent refuses requests involving credit card numbers and identity documents. The source also reports that some security experts cited by CBS urge limiting the data shared with these tools. The company acknowledges that Duet can misjudge urgency and that it works less well on personal matters such as booking tickets.
Competitive positioning and next steps
With Duet, Anthropic is entering an already crowded market. According to the material, OpenAI launched its Dots agents last month, always active on apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, while Meta has Muse, which has passed millions of downloads; Grok Bot and Instinct are also cited. Anthropic's choice appears to be a positioning around work rather than a general-purpose personal assistant. The product does not have separate pricing and shares the usage limits of existing plans.
The next step indicated is expansion to Team and Enterprise plans, for which Anthropic has not provided dates. If the preview holds up in testing with real users, Duet could become Claude's entry point into companies, leveraging existing subscriptions as a distribution channel. The timeline for Italy remains to be confirmed: the offering is currently limited to the United States. No data is available on preview results or details on the waitlist selection criteria.
