Anthropic on Wednesday, October 21, opened a research preview of Claude Duet, a standalone app in which Claude works as a proactive agent for professionals and small business owners. The app is available by waitlist on iOS, Android and claude.ai, starting with US Pro and Max subscribers, and shares those plans’ existing usage limits, the company said in its announcement.
Duet sends a short brief each morning on the most important items across a user’s connected apps, then checks those apps every few hours and messages the user only when something needs attention. Users can also hand it tasks, from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, financial or sales forecasts, prototypes and web apps. Anthropic said it built Duet around Claude Opus 5.5, and that the app runs in its own virtual machine with a browser, so work continues when a user’s laptop or phone is off.
Approval is the central guardrail. Before Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows exactly what it is about to do and waits for the user’s go-ahead, Anthropic said. Some actions, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts, are off-limits even with approval. A new classifier is designed to block sharing of the most sensitive data, such as credit card numbers and government IDs. Duet can tap more than 6,000 connectors in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks and Gusto, and can buy items through Stripe’s Link wallet and Shopify’s Shop Pay.
Anthropic was candid about limits. The early version “might misread a thread or miscalibrate what’s urgent,” it said, and personal errands such as booking tickets are not “quite as strong.” Background checks count against plan limits, and larger tasks use more of them.
The launch puts Anthropic up against Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s always-on dots agents, CNBC reported. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on Wednesday that more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse personal agents over the past month and a half. Meta has largely aimed Muse at consumers, and it has also brought its Muse app to the Mac. OpenAI launched dots last month, and Muse has drawn millions of downloads, Reuters reported.