Claude Duet is a new standalone app from Anthropic where Claude works as a proactive personal agent. It watches your email, calendar and apps, comes to you with what needs attention, and gets work done in the background. It checks with you before it sends, pays, signs or deletes anything.
The short version: it's an AI assistant that messages you first and keeps working while you sleep. Think of it as a chief of staff in your pocket. Regular Claude waits for you to ask. Duet starts the conversation.
What is Claude Duet?
| Regular Claude chat | Claude Duet | |
|---|---|---|
| Who starts the conversation | You | Duet, as well as you |
| Where it runs | While your chat is open | On its own cloud computer, even with the app closed |
| What you get back | Answers in chat | Finished work: drafted replies, briefs, dashboards, decks |
| Risky actions | Doesn't take them | Shows you exactly what it will do and waits for your yes |
It launched on 21 October 2026 as a research preview and runs on Claude Opus 5.5, which is what lets it judge what needs you, what can wait and when to check in first.
Who it's for
Anthropic built it for professionals and small business owners with more on their plate than they can keep track of. It's a good fit if you:
- live in your inbox and calendar and lose hours triaging both
- run a small business and wear the admin, finance and marketing hats yourself
- already use Claude with connected apps like Gmail, Slack or Shopify
One example Anthropic shared: Amin owns Shahs of Kabob, with about 110 staff, and uses Duet for accounting, customer support and marketing, working through invoices store by store.
Who can get it right now
| Status | |
|---|---|
| Country | US only. No date yet for anywhere else, including Australia |
| Plans | Pro and Max. Not Team or Enterprise yet |
| Access | Waitlist, opening in waves |
| Cost | No extra fee. It uses your normal plan limits |
| Where | iOS, Android and claude.ai, as its own app separate from the main Claude app |
How a day with Duet works
Step 1
Morning brief
What matters today
Step 2
Check-ins
Every few hours
Step 3
Spots a job
Or you hand one off
Step 4
Works in the cloud
App can be closed
Is it about to send, pay, sign or delete something?
Yes
Shows you exactly what it will do, then waits for your yes
No
Just does it and hands you the result
Key features in plain English
| Feature | What it means for you | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Zero setup | It inherits the memory, skills and connected apps from your Claude account, and can search your past chats | Peter Yang didn't reconnect anything. Duet read his email and calendar and suggested work in its first message |
| It comes to you | A short brief each morning, then check-ins every few hours. It only pings you when something needs you | Without being asked, it flagged a property viewing that was in someone's calendar on the wrong day |
| Runs in the cloud | It has its own virtual computer and browser, so your phone and laptop can be off | Jobs finish overnight and you get a notification |
| Real outputs, not just chat | Bigger jobs come back as files you can review and edit | Morning brief, email triage with drafted replies, a YouTube analytics report, a sponsor revenue dashboard |
| Learns how you write | A built-in skill reads your sent emails, Slack and docs, then builds a style guide for drafting | Peter's ran on 33 emails, 89 Slack messages, 47 DMs and 11 docs |
| "/" skills | Type / to see the built-in skills | Morning brief, learn how I write, Uber, DoorDash |
| Tasks, channels and groups | Each job gets its own thread, sorted into active, upcoming, scheduled and resolved | Works a lot like Claude Projects |
| Scheduled tasks | Jobs that repeat daily or weekly | Refresh a dashboard every Monday and email it to you |
| 6,000+ connectors | Plugs into the apps a business runs on | Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, Stripe, QuickBooks, Gusto, Docusign, Canva, Shopify |
| Text or voice | One ongoing thread for everything | A quick question and a week-long project start in the same place |
Shopping and payments
Duet can actually buy things for you. It finds the item, shows you what it's about to buy, and only checks out once you approve.
- You ask it to buy something.
- It finds the item and shows you the exact purchase.
- You approve the spend.
- It pays with a one-time card that only works for that purchase, so your real card number never sits with the agent.
| Wallet | How it pays |
|---|---|
| Shop Pay (Shopify) | Checks out at online stores. Shopify says this is the first time Shop Pay works inside an agent at stores that aren't on Shopify |
| Link (Stripe) | Link asks you to approve the spend, then pays with a virtual card |
You connect both inside Duet itself, not in the normal connectors directory.
If you sell online, there's a second side to this. Duet can set up, design and manage a Shopify store, and Anthropic says a visual editor for designing and previewing your storefront before it goes live is coming soon.
What it won't do without you
Duet drafts and prepares freely, but it stops and asks before anything you can't easily undo.
| Level | What happens | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Does it on its own | Reads, researches, drafts, builds | Triage your inbox, write replies, build a dashboard, prep a call brief |
| Asks first | Shows you exactly what it will do, then waits | Sending a message, making a payment, signing a document, deleting anything |
| Never, even if you approve | Off-limits during the preview | Trading shares, moving money between accounts |
It also never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens, and a new classifier guards against it sharing sensitive information.
Where it falls short
It's a research preview and Anthropic is upfront about that. These are the gaps the reviewers and Anthropic both point to:
- You can't see or control its browser. Peter's Uber booking failed on a "verify you're human" check, and there was nowhere in the app to step in and clear it. He says the team is working on it.
- Personal errands are weaker. Booking tickets and rides is less reliable than work tasks.
- It can't see skills on your own computer, only the ones in your Claude account. There's no desktop app yet.
- It can misjudge urgency or misread a thread, by Anthropic's own admission.
- It uses your plan limits. Background checks count, even the ones you never see. That's why it checks every few hours instead of constantly.
- Not for teams yet. No Team or Enterprise plans and no shared workspaces.
Is it really proactive? The two reviews disagree
| Reviewer | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Peter Yang (YouTube) | The most proactive agent he's tried | A default check-in runs every 3 hours from 9am to 10pm and keeps surfacing work. He found five a day too many and asked for fewer |
| Claire Vo (Lenny's Newsletter) | "Claude Duet is beautiful. I still forgot to use it" | It didn't nudge her enough to become a habit, and slow responses made back-and-forth work tiring |
Both agree it's one of the most polished agent launches so far, with careful onboarding, task lists and proper files instead of walls of chat.
Claude Duet vs Grok Bot vs Muse vs Dots
Each of these personal agents is best at one thing. Pick by the job you want done.
| Claude Duet | Grok Bot (xAI) | Muse (Meta) | Dots (OpenAI) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | Coming to you first and turning your inbox and apps into finished work | Market research using X | Phoning US businesses for you | Using everything ChatGPT already knows about you |
| Price | Included in Claude Pro and Max | Paid | Free | Part of ChatGPT |
| Standout feature | Morning brief, check-ins, polished dashboards and briefs | Free X integration | Calls a business to book a job or negotiate a bill | Lives inside ChatGPT, with your chat memory and threads |
| Main weakness | No browser view yet, can't add your own local skills | Email didn't work well in testing | Not on a frontier model, so more mistakes | Launched buggy and still feels slow |
| Pick it if | You run on email and calendar and want a chief of staff | You research markets and trends on X | You want an agent that makes phone calls | You already live in ChatGPT |
How to get access
- Join the waitlist at claude.com/product/claude-duet. It asks for your name, email, company, phone type and the first job you'd hand off.
- Use the email on your Claude account. Access is matched to it, or to the Google or Apple account on your phone.
- Wait for your invite. Access opens in waves to US Pro and Max users.
- Open the app. Your Claude memory, skills and connected apps are already there.
- Run "learn how I write" from the / menu so drafted emails sound like you.
- Hand off a first task in one short message, like "triage my inbox and draft replies".
- Tune the check-ins. Tell it what you want to hear about and how often, for example morning and mid-afternoon only.
- Connect Shop Pay or Link inside Duet if you want it to buy things for you.
Sources
Duet launched the day before I wrote this, so hands-on reviews are still thin. Anything not listed below comes from Anthropic's launch post and help docs.
| Claim | Source |
|---|---|
| What it is, who it's for, access, approvals, hard limits, passwords, Shop Pay and Link, usage limits, the Jess, Mya and Amin examples | Anthropic's "Introducing Claude Duet" post and "Get started with Claude Duet" help page |
| Shop Pay at stores not on Shopify | Shopify's announcement |
| Check-ins every 3 hours, "/" skills, tasks and channels, the dashboards, the Uber failure, the four-way comparison | Peter Yang's hands-on YouTube review |
| "Beautiful, but I forgot to use it", slow responses, no desktop or team support | Claire Vo's review on Lenny's Newsletter |
