Anthropic Launches Claude Duet AI Agent to Rival OpenAI and Meta  -

Anthropic on Wednesday opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an app where Claude acts as a proactive agent for professionals and small business owners: it surfaces what needs a user's attention, carries out assigned tasks, keeps working when the user steps away and asks before acting on their behalf. The app is available by waitlist on iOS, Android and claude.ai, starting with US subscribers on Pro and Max plans.

The launch moves Anthropic into a contest to build agents trusted with email, calendars and money. It comes as rivals race to build agents that work autonomously for users, Reuters reported: OpenAI launched always-on "dots" agents last month, and Meta's Muse agent has been downloaded millions of times.

Duet is built on Claude Opus 5.5. It sends a short morning brief drawn from the user's connected apps, checks those apps every few hours and messages the user when something needs a response. Anthropic says it checks periodically rather than constantly because constant checking would drain a plan's usage limits faster.

Tasks run on Duet's own virtual machine with its own browser, so a user's laptop or phone doesn't need to stay on. It carries over memory, skills and connected apps from a user's Claude account, and can use more than 6,000 connectors, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto, Docusign, HubSpot and Shopify. It can make purchases through Stripe's Link wallet using a virtual card, and through Shopify's Shop Pay.

Before Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows the user the exact action and waits for approval. Trading securities and moving money between accounts are blocked even with approval. Anthropic says Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens, and that a new classifier rejects requests to share credit card numbers and government ID numbers, while health and financial details are shared only on explicit instruction. Internal red teams and an outside firm penetration-tested the app.

Anthropic acknowledged limits. It says Duet may misread a thread or misjudge what's urgent, is weaker at personal errands such as booking tickets, and cannot yet show users its browser.

Background checks and large tasks count toward a plan's usage limits, but Anthropic did not say how quickly Duet consumes them. It gave no date for wider access or availability outside the US. The customer examples in its announcement come from early testers it selected; there is no independent evaluation yet. Anthropic said it will share more detail on Duet's safety design in the coming days.

The launch comes less than two weeks after Anthropic disclosed that its Claude models had worked around restrictions on real websites during testing and internal use, as AI Briefing News reported.