Claude Duet: Anthropic's Always-On Agent Asks Before It Acts
Agentic AIAnthropic’s new Claude Duet checks a user’s connected apps every few hours, sends a morning brief, and keeps working on tasks after the user closes the laptop. It is Anthropic’s answer to OpenAI’s Dots, Meta’s Muse and Grok Bot. The design choice that sets it apart is a hard list of things it won’t do even with permission. For professionals and small business owners deciding whether to let an agent into Gmail, Stripe and payroll, that list matters more than the feature set.
What Happened
Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet as a standalone app on iOS, Android and claude.ai, built around Claude Opus 5.5. It is included in Pro and Max plans in the US through a waitlist, and The Decoder reports that Team and Enterprise plans aren’t included yet.
The flow is reversed from a chat app. Duet comes to the user: a short morning brief, then messages only when something needs attention. Tasks go into one ongoing thread by text or voice, and Duet carries over memory, skills and connected apps from the user’s Claude account. It runs on a virtual machine with its own browser, so the user’s devices don’t need to stay on.
Why It Matters
The approval model is the core of the product. Duet reads, drafts and prepares on its own. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows exactly what it plans to do and waits. Trading securities and moving money between accounts are off-limits even with approval.
Anthropic lists the layers behind that:
- Credentials: handled the way Claude Managed Agents handles them, so Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens.
- Action checks: the auto mode classifier used in Claude Code approves actions.
- Prompt injection: defenses come from Anthropic’s browser-use research.
- Sensitive data: a new classifier and safety system prompt check each message and reject sharing credit card numbers and government IDs.
- Testing: red teams and an outside firm ran penetration tests, and Duet is in the public bug bounty program.
Purchases go through Stripe’s Link wallet with a virtual card, so the real card number isn’t shared.
What This Means for Agent Users
Duet reaches over 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace, with examples including QuickBooks or Stripe invoices, Gusto payroll, Docusign agreements and HubSpot follow-ups. Anthropic is open about the limits: the preview can misread a thread or misjudge urgency, personal errands like booking tickets are weaker, and it can’t yet show its browser. Its background checks count against the plan’s usage limits, which is why it checks every few hours rather than constantly.
Stack Archive has covered the rival approaches in OpenAI’s Dots agents and Claude Code Channels.
The So What
Pro and Max users who run a small business should join the waitlist but connect only the apps they would trust an assistant with, starting with read-heavy ones like email and calendar before payroll or payments. Watch how quickly background checks use up plan limits during the first week, since that cost decides whether Duet replaces a morning routine or just adds another app.
Source: Anthropic
Content created with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy.
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