Anthropic opens a research preview of Claude Duet, a separate app where Claude works as a proactive agent that comes to you, keeps working and checks before it acts
We’re opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent. It comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.
Context
It is Anthropic's clearest move from a chatbot you prompt to an assistant that watches your apps and acts for you, a shift every major lab is chasing.
Claude Duet is a new app from Anthropic, separate from the main Claude app, available on iOS, Android and claude.ai. In a follow up post, Claude said it is an early research preview available through a waitlist on Pro and Max plans in the US, and that it can still misjudge what is urgent.
Deep dive
On October 21, Claude posted that it is opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent. It said Duet comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.
In follow up posts, Claude said Duet is built around Claude Opus 5.5 and carries over memory, skills and connected apps from a user's Claude account. It said Duet never directly sees passwords, that a new classifier guards against sharing sensitive information, and that important decisions stay with the user.
Anthropic's article says Duet sends a morning brief, checks connected accounts every few hours and runs tasks on its own virtual machine with a browser, so a user's devices need not be on. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows what it will do and waits for approval. Some actions, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts, are blocked even with approval. It can use more than 6,000 connectors, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto and Shopify, and can buy items through Stripe's Link with a virtual card.
Anthropic says it is aimed at professionals and small business owners, that personal errands are weaker, and that background checks count toward plan usage limits. Testers quoted include a real estate broker and a restaurant owner.
What to expect next
Watch how quickly Anthropic lets people off the waitlist and whether Duet expands beyond the US and beyond Pro and Max. The promised details on its safety design will show how it handles prompt injection and sensitive data. Also watch how it uses up plan limits in practice, and how it compares with proactive agents from OpenAI, Google and others, including Grok Bot.