Claude Duet: Anthropic’s Proactive Agent Opens a Waitlist

Anthropic has opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an agent app that is meant to come to you rather than wait to be asked. Announced on 21 October, Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5, lives in its own app on iOS, Android and claude.ai, separate from the main Claude app, and is aimed at professionals and small business owners with a lot to keep track of. Access is by waitlist, starting with Pro and Max subscribers in the US.

The working pattern is a short brief every morning on what matters across your connected apps, then check-ins every few hours, with a message only when something needs you; you can set what it reports and how often. Everything happens in one running conversation, typed or spoken. You can also hand it work, from scheduling a meeting to building a dashboard, a sales or financial forecast, a prototype or a small web app. Duet does that on its own virtual machine with a browser, so your laptop or phone does not have to stay on, and it starts with the memory, skills and connected apps you already use in Claude.

What it may do on its own

Duet has to show you the action and get your approval before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, and some actions stay off-limits even with approval, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts. It can shop through Stripe’s Link wallet, which issues a virtual card, and check out with Shop Pay; it can also set up and run a Shopify store. Anthropic says the agent never sees passwords or sign-in tokens, that every action is screened by its auto mode classifier, and that a separate classifier watches for leaks of sensitive data. The most sensitive data, such as card numbers and government IDs, is refused outright, while health and personal finance information is shared only when you say so. Saved 1Password logins and a visual storefront editor are listed as coming soon.

There is no separate price. Duet is included in Pro and Max and draws on the same usage limits as the rest of Claude, and its background checks and larger jobs use more of that allowance than an ordinary chat. Team and Enterprise plans are not part of the preview. Anthropic lists the rough edges plainly: Duet can misread a thread, misjudge how urgent something is or miss something that arrives between check-ins, it is weaker at personal errands such as booking tickets, and it cannot yet show you its browser while it works. Among the early testers it quotes, Amin Ebrahimi, who runs a restaurant group of about 110 employees, uses it for accounting, support and marketing: “I don’t need to open up 100 tabs.”

Duet arrives into a crowded field. Meta’s Muse agent has passed 10.9 million downloads since it appeared on 8 September, according to Sensor Tower figures reported by VentureBeat; OpenAI introduced Dots at DevDay; and Google gave its Gemini Agent an email address of its own this month. Anthropic’s product team said in May that Claude’s next step was anticipating what users want before they ask. Duet is that idea shipped with the brakes visible: most of its announcement is about what it will not do without a tap from you, which is the part businesses handing it their inbox and their payment card will read first.