Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, a proactive AI agent that messages you first instead of waiting for a prompt. It is a research preview on a waitlist, open only to Pro and Max subscribers in the US, and Anthropic announced it on October 21, 2026.
The idea is simple: it watches the apps you connect and tells you when something needs attention. The harder question is how much of your inbox, calendar and payments you want an agent reading while you are away from the screen.
TL;DR: Claude Duet is a background agent that sends a morning brief, watches your connected apps and does tasks on its own virtual machine. It is waitlist only for US Pro and Max users, has no separate price, and asks before it sends, pays, signs or deletes. Anthropic says it can still misjudge what is urgent, so treat it as an early test, not a finished assistant.
What Claude Duet does without being asked
Every day starts with a short morning brief covering the most important items across your connected apps. During the day, Claude Duet keeps checking those apps and messages you only when something needs attention.
You can also hand it work, from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, forecasts, prototypes and web apps. Those jobs run in the background on the agent’s own virtual machine with its own browser, so your laptop or phone does not need to stay on.
Everything happens in one ongoing thread, typed or by voice, and your memory, skills and connected apps carry over from your Claude account. For anyone who has ever lost a Monday to a buried email, that is the pitch in one sentence.
| Detail | What Anthropic says |
|---|---|
| Status | Research preview, waitlist only |
| Who can join | Pro and Max subscribers in the US |
| Where it runs | Standalone iOS and Android app, and claude.ai |
| Price | No separate price, included in Pro and Max |
| Connectors | Over 6,000 from the Claude Marketplace |
| Off limits even with approval | Trading securities, moving money between accounts |
That list of limits says a lot about how cautious Anthropic is being with an agent that can act on your behalf.
How Claude Duet handles approvals and your accounts
Claude Duet can read, draft and prepare work on its own. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows you the action and waits for a yes.
Purchases go through Link, Stripe’s digital wallet, using a virtual card, and it can also check out with Shop Pay. You can disconnect any app it has access to at any time.
On privacy, Anthropic says the agent never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens, and that a dedicated classifier and safety prompt block requests to share the strictest data, such as credit card numbers and government ID. Health and personal finance details are shared only when you tell it to.
The company also lists defenses against prompt injection, plus red teaming, an outside penetration test and coverage under its public bug bounty. Agents acting on untrusted input is a known weak spot, and a recent Plugin4Shell bug showed how little a coding agent verifies. Anthropic says it will share more safety details in the coming days.
Where the Claude Duet preview is still rough
Anthropic is unusually direct about the gaps. Claude Duet may misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent, which matters when the whole product is deciding what deserves your attention.
Personal errands, such as booking tickets, are less capable for now. It cannot yet show you its browser, so you see results rather than the steps. It also lives in its own app, separate from the main Claude app.
Usage is the other catch. Background checks count toward your plan limits, and bigger jobs such as financial models or decks use more model turns and background work. An agent that checks your apps every few hours is quietly spending the same allowance you use for chats, and that will be the detail most heavy users notice first.
Unattended agents can misfire in odd ways, as when Claude filed a fake tip on a murder case because nobody told it not to.
Who should join the Claude Duet waitlist first
If you are a US Pro or Max subscriber who already lives in Gmail, Slack or a billing tool, the waitlist costs nothing and the agent adds no new bill. Anthropic says you sign up at claude.com/product/claude-duet and get an email when your turn comes.
Everyone else can wait. Anthropic says a visual storefront editor for Shopify and sign in with saved 1Password logins are coming later, which tells you the connector list is still growing.
Start with one or two low stakes apps, read every approval prompt for the first week, and see whether the morning brief actually saves you time before you connect anything that touches money.
