Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet on October 21, introducing an artificial intelligence (AI) agent that monitors work, prioritises tasks and carries out business activities in the background. Access is initially limited to subscribers in the US on Claude Pro and Max plans through a waitlist, the company said.
“We built Claude Duet for professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track,” Anthropic said in its announcement.
Available as a standalone app on iOS and Android, as well as through claude.ai, Claude Duet is built around the company’s Claude Opus 5.5 model. According to Anthropic, it prepares a morning briefing based on connected applications and sends notifications when it identifies something requiring attention.
The agent can schedule meetings, draft emails, build dashboards, prepare financial and sales forecasts, develop prototypes and create web applications. It can also connect with more than 6,000 tools through the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks and HubSpot, the company said.
Claude Duet uses a virtual machine with its own browser so it can keep working when users step away from their devices. It checks connected accounts every few hours and sends updates when tasks are complete or require review. The agent also carries over existing memory, skills and connected apps from a user's Claude account.
Anthropic said Claude Duet prepares work independently but requires approval before sending messages, making payments, signing documents or deleting information. Securities trading and transfers between accounts remain prohibited, even with user approval.
The company said Duet does not directly access users’ passwords or sign-in tokens. It also uses safeguards designed to detect prompt injection, in which malicious instructions embedded in content attempt to manipulate an AI system.
The AI company said a dedicated classifier and safety prompt are designed to block requests to share highly sensitive information, including credit card numbers and government identification.
Users can share health and personal financial information when they explicitly instruct the agent to send it. These are the company’s stated safeguards, and Anthropic said it continues to develop them.
Anthropic said early testers have used Claude Duet for accounting, customer support and marketing. Amin Ebrahimi, owner of Shahs of Kabob, a South Florida restaurant business with about 110 employees, used the agent to work through invoices across stores.
“It brings it all together,” Ebrahimi said. “I don’t need to open up 100 tabs.”
The research preview shares usage limits with the rest of Claude, with background checks and complex tasks counting towards those limits.
Anthropic acknowledged that Duet may misread conversations or misjudge urgency, while its capabilities for personal errands such as booking tickets remain less developed.
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