What Anthropic announced
Anthropic has made Claude Duet available in research preview, an agent application presented as capable of acting proactively and continuing work while the user is not at the computer. According to ITmedia AI+, the announcement was made on October 21 local time, and the design basis is Claude Opus 5.5, to which the company attributes a strong capacity for judgment, citing the setting of priorities among tasks as an example.
The company states that it developed Duet for very busy professionals and for small and medium-sized business managers who cannot manage everything: the stated objective is to organize tasks, support daily decisions and free up time to devote to more complex projects. These are goals stated by the company, not measured results.
How it works and what remains to be understood
The described operation involves a morning summary of information from connected applications, such as Gmail and Slack, monitoring during the day and notifications limited to cases requiring attention. The user can also assign specific tasks, from scheduling meetings to administrative duties and development. Duet uses a virtual machine with its own browser and continues to operate after a laptop or smartphone has been closed.
As in Claude, connectors and Claude Marketplace plugins are available. The least defined point concerns actual autonomy: the material does not indicate how the agent selects priorities or how the user can monitor or cancel its ongoing actions; these remain to be verified.
Safeguards, availability and limitations
Anthropic claims that Duet has dedicated classifiers and system instructions to examine messages and prevent the leakage of confidential information. The system is designed to refuse requests to share credit card data or identity documents, and agents that send emails or messages always check the recipient. Other sensitive information, such as health or financial information, is sent externally only upon explicit instruction.
Duet is offered on the web and via iOS and Android apps. The preview is included in the Pro and Max plans, requires registration on a waitlist and carries the same usage limits as Claude. No data is provided on additional pricing, activation times or rollout beyond the two plans cited; the absence of independent verification of the stated safeguards remains an element to be ascertained. OpenAI also appears in the background information, but it is not linked to the announcement.
