Anthropic launches Claude Duet agent as US waitlist preview

Anthropic announced Claude Duet on Wednesday, a proactive AI agent released as a research preview. Access starts with a waitlist, open only to Claude subscribers in the US. The Verge and 9to5Google say the waitlist covers Pro and Max plans.

Duet is aimed at professionals and small business owners with crowded workloads. Each morning it sends a short brief covering the most important items across connected apps, then monitors those apps during the day and messages the user only when something needs attention. It can also take on assigned work, from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, sales or financial forecasts, prototypes and web apps.

The agent is built on Claude Opus 5.5. It runs on its own virtual machine with a browser, so it can keep working in the background without an open Claude session. It draws on memory, skills and connected apps from Claude. Anthropic is shipping standalone iOS and Android apps for it, and The Verge reports it is also available through Claude on the web.

Anthropic says Duet checks connected accounts every few hours rather than continuously, because constant checking would drain plan limits much faster. Duet shares usage with other Claude tools, including Claude Code. Users can set how often Duet messages them and on which topics, and Anthropic says it is still tuning when the agent decides to interrupt.

On safety, Anthropic says Duet has a new classifier and system prompt meant to block requests to share its most sensitive tier of data, such as credit card numbers. The company says Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens, and health or personal finance information passes through only when the user explicitly says so. Before a major step such as sending a payment or deleting something, Duet asks for approval. Anthropic plans to share more about its safety protections in the coming days.

Anthropic calls this an early version. It says Duet may misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent, and that it is not as strong at personal errands such as booking tickets.

Why it matters

Duet puts Anthropic alongside Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots in the market for agents that act on their own rather than waiting for a prompt. 9to5Google notes that it arrives a few weeks after OpenAI launched Dots.

Pricing is one point of difference. Engadget reports that Anthropic says subscribers to its $20 per month Pro plan will get access once Duet reaches general availability. Dots, by comparison, is currently limited to OpenAI’s Pro tier, where plans start at $100 per month.

What we don’t know yet

Anthropic has not said when the waitlist will open to more people or when general availability will begin. Its fuller description of Duet’s safety protections is still to come. Because Duet draws on connected accounts and shared usage limits, how quickly it consumes a plan’s allowance in practice remains to be seen.