Claude Duet is Anthropic's proactive agent. Here is who can use it and what it does.

Anthropic has a new app, and it is not another chat window. Claude Duet, announced on October 21, is a proactive agent: it checks your connected apps on its own, tells you what needs attention, and keeps working on tasks after you close the app. It is in research preview behind a waitlist, open only to US subscribers on the Claude Pro and Max plans.

Anthropic describes it this way:

"Claude Duet comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working even when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf." - Anthropic

What Anthropic has confirmed

The details below come from Anthropic's announcement and the Claude Duet product page.

• Model: Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5.
• Where it runs: each user gets a cloud computer with its own browser, so tasks continue when your phone or laptop is off.
• How it stays proactive: it checks connected apps every few hours and sends a notification when something needs you. It also builds a daily brief of priority items.
• Integrations: it can use more than 6,000 connectors and plugins. Anthropic names Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto, HubSpot, Shopify, Canva and DocuSign among them, and Duet picks up the memory, skills and apps already in your Claude account.
• Approvals: it asks before sending messages, making payments, signing documents or deleting content.
• Platforms: standalone iOS and Android apps, plus claude.ai on the web. For now it is separate from the main Claude app.
• Plans: Pro and Max only. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet.
• Usage: during the preview, Duet shares your plan's usage limits with the rest of Claude and, according to the product page, "uses them differently than a typical conversation."

On safety, Anthropic says Duet never stores your passwords and handles logins the same way as Claude Managed Agents. An auto mode classifier blocks unauthorized actions, and a new classifier stops it from leaking sensitive details such as card numbers or ID documents. The company also says the product has been red-teamed, tested by outside penetration testers and covered by its bug bounty program.

What it cannot do yet

Anthropic lists its own limits. Duet cannot book tickets yet, cannot show you what its browser is seeing, and is not built for personal errands. That fits the target audience. Anthropic's early tester examples are a real estate broker who caught a scheduling error, a restaurant owner who pulled accounting, customer support and marketing into one place, and a brand strategist who got a meeting brief without asking for one.

According to TechCrunch, Duet can make purchases through Stripe Link or Shopify Shop Pay with your approval, but it refuses to trade securities or move money between accounts.

What is reported, not confirmed

Engadget reports that $20-a-month Pro subscribers will keep access once Duet reaches general availability. Anthropic has not given a date for that, or said whether usage limits will change. The press also frames Duet as Anthropic's answer to Meta's Muse agents and OpenAI's Dots. Engadget reports that Dots is limited to ChatGPT Pro, which starts at $100 a month, so if Duet does stay on the $20 plan it would be the cheapest of the three to try.

What this means for you

Duet is a different kind of product from the chat assistants we usually compare. You do not open it to ask a question. It watches your inbox, calendar, books and CRM, and comes back with a short list of things to approve. Whether that is useful depends on how much of your work already sits in connected apps.

• Solo professionals and small business owners are the stated audience. If you run invoicing in QuickBooks or Stripe, sales in HubSpot and email in Gmail, Duet is designed to bridge them, and the approval step on payments and messages is the main safeguard.
• Teams on Claude Team or Enterprise cannot use it yet. Admins should expect questions, and should note that Duet would need access to the same connectors their policies already govern.
• Heavy Claude users should watch their limits. A background agent running on Opus 5.5 that checks apps every few hours will draw from the same allowance as your chats and Claude Code sessions.
• Anyone outside the US has no access in this preview and no announced timeline.

Our advice: join the waitlist if you already pay for Pro or Max and your work runs through supported apps, but start with read-only tasks such as the daily brief and meeting prep. Give it approval rights over email and payments only once you have seen how it handles the low-stakes work. If you are choosing between assistants today, our ChatGPT vs Claude comparison covers the core chat products, and our Claude Connectors page covers how Claude links to business apps.