Anthropic announced Claude Duet on October 21, 2026, as a research preview of “a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent.” It is a standalone app on iOS and Android and on claude.ai, separate from the main Claude app, built around Claude Opus 5.5. Access is by waitlist, starting with US Pro and Max subscribers, and it is included in those plans during the preview.
Duet sends a morning brief, checks connected accounts every few hours and messages the user only when something needs attention. It carries over the user’s memory, skills and connected apps, and runs on its own virtual machine with a browser so the user’s laptop or phone does not need to stay on. Anthropic says it can reach more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe and Docusign, and can make purchases through Stripe’s Link wallet with a virtual card.
The approval model is the core of the design. Duet reads, drafts and prepares work on its own, but before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, “it shows you exactly what it’s about to do and waits for your approval.” Trading securities and moving money between accounts are off-limits even with approval. Anthropic says it never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens, and that a dedicated classifier blocks sharing of credit card and government ID numbers. Background checks count against the same usage limits as the rest of Claude.
Why it matters: Duet puts Anthropic into the always-on personal agent category that OpenAI, Meta and xAI entered earlier in 2026, and its explicit list of actions that require approval or are banned outright is a concrete statement of where a frontier lab draws the line for unattended agents with access to money and mail.
What it does not show: it is a waitlisted research preview with no published reliability or safety evaluation numbers. Anthropic itself says personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker, that the agent cannot yet show its browser, and that it may misread threads or misjudge urgency.