Anthropic Launches Claude Duet, a Proactive AI Agent for Pro and Max
Anthropic's Claude Duet is a proactive AI agent built on Opus 5.5 that works in the background, now in research preview for US Claude Pro and Max subscribers.
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Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, a proactive AI agent that watches a user’s connected apps, flags what needs attention and carries out tasks in the background. Announced on October 21, 2026, and built on the company’s Opus 5.5 model, Duet is available as a research preview to Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US through a waitlist. The launch is Anthropic’s answer to Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots, which arrived in September.
What is Claude Duet?
Duet is designed to act before it is asked. Each morning it sends a short briefing on important items from a user’s connected accounts, then checks those accounts every few hours and sends an alert when something needs a decision or a task is finished. Anthropic is aiming it at professionals and small-business owners who have more to track than they can manage.
The agent runs on its own remote virtual machine with a built-in browser, so work can continue after the user closes a laptop or puts down a phone. It is offered as a standalone mobile app and on the web at claude.ai, and it reuses the memory, skills and app connections a user has already set up in Claude, so there is little to configure. All interactions take place in a single ongoing conversation thread.
What can Claude Duet do?
VentureBeat reports that Duet can tap more than 6,000 connectors and plugins through the Claude Marketplace. Examples Anthropic highlighted include:
- Finance: Reviewing QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and preparing reminders.
- Sales: Using HubSpot data for outreach and assembling agreements for signature in Docusign.
- People operations: Preparing and running Gusto payroll and drafting job listings for LinkedIn after approval.
- Marketing and commerce: Building Canva campaigns and helping maintain Shopify stores.
- Analysis and building: Preparing financial forecasts, building dashboards and creating web apps.
One early user, Amin Ebrahimi, who owns a business with about 110 employees, told VentureBeat the appeal is consolidation: “I don’t need to open up 100 tabs.”
How Anthropic is handling safety and privacy
Anthropic has put several guardrails around an agent that can act on a user’s accounts. Duet drafts actions but asks for approval before sending a message, making a payment, signing a document or deleting anything. According to VentureBeat, it is barred from trading securities or moving money between financial accounts, even if a user authorizes it.
MacRumors reports that Duet never sees passwords or logins when it is given account access, and that a dedicated classifier and safety system prompt check each message to prevent leaks of sensitive information. VentureBeat adds that the most restricted data, such as payment card and government ID numbers, is blocked outright, while some other sensitive information is used only on explicit instruction.
The company is also upfront about rough edges. The preview can misread a conversation and assign the wrong urgency, and users cannot yet watch Duet’s browser as it works.
How much does Claude Duet cost?
There is no separate charge for Duet during the preview. It is included with Claude Pro, which costs $20 a month or $200 a year, and Claude Max, which starts at $100 a month. Duet draws on the same usage allowance as regular Claude chats, and its background checks count against that limit, which is why Anthropic checks accounts every few hours rather than continuously.
Duet is not yet available on Team or Enterprise plans, and Anthropic has not announced a Duet API, post-preview pricing or a timeline for wider rollout.
How Claude Duet compares to Meta Muse and OpenAI Dots
Duet enters a fast-forming market. Meta launched its Muse agent on September 8, and on Meta’s October 21 earnings call Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada had set up a Muse agent in about six weeks, with roughly a quarter using it on any given day, Fortune reports. OpenAI launched Dots, agents powered by its GPT-6 Astra model, on September 29.
Muse has a free entry point, while Dots is aimed at OpenAI’s higher-priced Pro and business tiers. Fortune suggests Duet may partly be a defensive move, giving paying Claude subscribers a reason not to switch to a rival assistant. It also builds on earlier Anthropic products, including Claude Tag, which follows Slack discussions, and a September update that let Claude keep working on assignments after users close their laptops.
What happens next
Anthropic has not said when Duet will leave research preview or expand beyond its US waitlist. Fortune notes that compute capacity, which strained Anthropic earlier in the year, could affect how quickly access widens, though the company has not linked the waitlist to any shortage.