Anthropic introduces Claude Duet, a proactive AI agent for professionals

Duet is designed to work in the background and check in when needed, according to SiliconANGLE. It sends a short morning brief on the most important items across connected apps and monitors messages only when something requires attention. It can schedule meetings and handle more complex work such as building dashboards with interactive tools, creating financial or sales forecasts, and prototyping and building web apps.

Users can message Duet by text or voice without prompts or setup, treating it like another teammate. The agent runs in one thread with a history and can return finished documents, spreadsheets or decks for review. Anthropic said Duet draws on memory, skills and apps from Claude, so no additional setup is required. TechCrunch reported that Duet is built on the Claude Opus 5.5 model and can connect to more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace.

TechCrunch reported that Duet can make online purchases on users' behalf through Stripe's Link digital wallet or Shopify's Shop Pay, but sensitive steps such as payments require user approval. The agent will not trade securities or move money between accounts. Anthropic said an automatic classifier checks messages for sensitive information leaks and double-checks with the user before important actions; by default, the agent turns down requests for credit card numbers and government identification. The company said Duet is built on its framework for trustworthy agents, which also guides Claude Code and Claude in Chrome.

Anthropic described Duet as an early, experimental version and said the research preview will help it understand use cases and failure modes. The agent may misread a thread or miscalibrate what is urgent. Because it is designed around work, personal errands such as booking tickets will not be treated as urgently, and it cannot show its browser. TechCrunch reported that Anthropic distinguishes Duet from personal agents such as Instinct by noting that it is not good at handling errands or booking tickets.

Anthropic staff are using Duet internally, according to SiliconANGLE. Boris Cherny of Claude Code uses it on walks to talk through to-dos, and Karan Ahuja, who leads the Duet team, uses it to schedule user interviews and ship code. The introduction places Anthropic in a crowded field of personal and productivity assistants that includes Meta Muse, OpenAI Dots, Hark, Instinct, Grok Bot and Fo, TechCrunch reported. Several rivals are also targeting business use cases. Meta's Muse is a personal AI assistant, but the company has released a version for small businesses with connections to other apps, and OpenAI's Dots has a business slant through integrations with professional tools.

Editor's Summary

Anthropic introduced Claude Duet in research preview, positioning a proactive agent for professional and small-business tasks such as daily briefings, dashboards and forecasts. The app draws on Claude's memory and connectors and includes approval and classification safeguards for sensitive actions, while access is limited to Pro and Max users with a waitlist. Anthropic says the preview will inform work on use cases and failure modes as it competes with other agent products.