Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, a proactive AI agent that monitors connected apps, runs background tasks and alerts users when work needs attention, the company said. The tool is offered as a standalone app on Android, iOS and on claude.ai, and it is built on the Claude Opus 5.5 model, according to Anthropic.
Duet delivers a short morning briefing summarising important items from apps you connect to it and then checks throughout the day to see if anything has changed. It runs inside its own virtual machine and includes a browser environment so tasks can continue even when users are offline, Anthropic said. The agent shows the exact action before sending a message, making a payment, signing a document or deleting information, and it asks for approval before acting.
Anthropic has placed Duet in an early research preview, available in the US to customers on Pro or Max plans via a waitlist rather than an open download, a company announcement and reporting explained. The preview is included for subscribers and uses the same usage limits as other Claude services, meaning background checks and work done by Duet count against a user’s existing quota.
Anthropic described safeguards intended to prevent the agent from exposing sensitive data. Duet does not directly access stored passwords or sign-in tokens, and it blocks the sharing of credit card numbers and government identification at the message layer, the company said. Anthropic also acknowledged that the first version can be overly enthusiastic, that personal tasks such as booking tickets are not its strongest use case, and that it cannot yet show users the agent’s browser.
Distribution Limits, Pricing And Practical Steps For Users
Access to Claude Duet is gated. Anthropic’s stated distribution channel is its waitlist, and the company warns against third party invite sellers or unofficial downloads. A guide to the preview noted there is no legitimate resale of access and that any page charging for invites or downloads is not endorsed by Anthropic.
Anthropic bundles Duet into its Pro and Max tiers. The company’s pricing page, as reported, lists Pro at about seventeen dollars per month on annual billing or twenty dollars month to month. Max plans come in two sizes, listed at one hundred and two hundred dollars per month, according to the announcement. Background agent activity will consume the same model quota used by regular Claude sessions, and the app notifies users that checks run every few hours to limit quota use.
Duet connects to a broad set of services via the Claude Marketplace; reporting cited more than six thousand supported integrations, including Gmail and Slack. It can route purchases through Stripe’s Link wallet and Shopify’s Shop Pay. Users are advised to prune connected apps, set notification preferences, and configure payment rails before the invitation arrives, because Duet inherits account memory, skills and app permissions from an existing Claude account.
