Claude Duet: an agent that watches your apps and asks before it acts
In brief
Anthropic opened a waitlist for Claude Duet on October 21, 2026. It is a separate app that checks your connected accounts every few hours, sends a morning brief, works on tasks while you're away, and stops for your approval before it sends, pays, signs, or deletes anything. Here's how it works, what it costs in plan usage, and what to hand it first.
Contents
Every Claude product so far has waited for you to type something. Claude Duet is the first one that starts the conversation.
Anthropic opened a waitlist for Duet on October 21, 2026. It is a research preview, starting with Pro and Max subscribers in the US. It runs as its own app on iOS and Android, and on claude.ai. For now it is separate from the main Claude app.
What it does
Duet does four things:
- Sends a morning brief. A short summary of what matters across the apps you've connected: email, calendar, accounting, CRM, whatever you've wired up.
- Watches and interrupts only when needed. It checks your connected accounts every few hours and messages you when something needs a decision.
- Does assigned work while you're away. Scheduling meetings, building a sales forecast, drafting a dashboard, prototyping a small web app.
- Asks before acting. It reads, drafts, and prepares on its own. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document, or deletes anything, it shows you the action and waits.
You talk to it in one ongoing thread, by typing or by voice. It carries over the memory, skills, and connected apps from your Claude account, so you don't rebuild your setup.
Where it runs
Duet runs on its own virtual machine with its own browser. Your laptop and phone can be off. This is the same idea as Cowork in the cloud, applied to a standing assistant instead of a single task.
It can use the 6,000+ connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. Anthropic's examples are small-business chores:
- Drafting reminders for unpaid invoices in QuickBooks or Stripe
- Preparing payroll in Gusto for you to approve
- Posting an approved job listing to LinkedIn
- Sending an agreement for signature through Docusign
It can also buy things for your business. Purchases go through Link, Stripe's wallet, or Shop Pay. Link issues a virtual card for each purchase, so Duet never holds your real card number.
The limits Anthropic set
Some actions are blocked even if you approve them: trading securities and moving money between accounts are two Anthropic names. A separate classifier stops Duet from sharing the most sensitive information, such as card numbers and government IDs. Health and personal-finance details are shared only when you tell it to.
Duet never sees your passwords or sign-in tokens. Its actions are screened by the same classifier that runs auto mode in Claude Code, and its defenses against hidden instructions on web pages come from Anthropic's browser-agent research.
Anthropic also lists what it does badly today. It can misread a thread or get the urgency wrong. Personal errands like booking tickets are weaker than work tasks. And you can't yet watch its browser.
What it costs
There is no separate price. Duet is included in Pro and Max and draws from the same usage limits as the rest of Claude.
That has a practical consequence. The background checks every few hours count against your limit, and so does every task. A financial model or a slide deck takes many model turns. If you already hit your Pro limit most weeks, expect Duet to make that worse. Anthropic says it checks every few hours rather than constantly for exactly this reason.
What to hand it first
If you get access, start with one recurring job that has a clear approval point:
- Pick a chore you do weekly where the work is gathering and drafting, and the decision is yours. Chasing unpaid invoices is the canonical example.
- Connect only the apps that job needs. You can disconnect any app later, and fewer connections means fewer background checks eating your limit.
- Tell it the rule in one sentence. "Every Monday, draft reminders for any invoice more than 14 days overdue and show me the list."
- Approve or reject for two weeks. Each rejection with a reason ("too formal for this client") teaches it more than a long setup prompt.
- Then add the morning brief. Once you trust its drafts, the brief is where it starts saving you the 20 minutes of checking five apps.
If you run a team, Duet is a personal product for now. There are no admin controls, and it is not part of Team or Enterprise plans. Staff who sign up are using their own Pro or Max accounts, so the guidance in your AI usage policy about personal accounts and company data applies.