Claude Duet: What Anthropic's Proactive Agent App Does, Who Can Get It and Its Limits

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Claude Duet is Anthropic's new proactive agent app. Instead of waiting for you to open a chat, it sends a morning brief on what needs your attention, checks your connected apps through the day, takes tasks you hand it by message and keeps working on its own cloud computer while you are away. It asks before it sends, pays, signs or deletes anything. Anthropic opened it as a research preview on October 21, 2026, by waitlist, for Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US.

Claude Duet at a Glance

What Claude Duet Does

Anthropic's product page describes it as an agent "you hand off work to through messages". You talk to it by text or voice in one ongoing thread, so a quick reply and a week-long project start in the same place. It carries over your memory, skills and connected apps from your Claude account, so there is little setup.

Day to day, that means:

• A morning brief on the most important items across your connected apps.
• Check-ins every few hours. Duet looks at your connected accounts on a schedule and messages you only when something needs you. Anthropic says it does not check nonstop because that would use up plan limits much faster. You can tell it what you want to hear about and how often.
• Background tasks. It has a virtual machine with its own browser, so your laptop or phone does not need to stay on. You get a notification when a task is done or needs review.
• Finished work. It returns documents, sheets, decks and dashboards for review, and Anthropic lists financial or sales forecasts, prototypes and web apps among the larger jobs.

Connectors and payments

Duet can use the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. Anthropic's examples:

For purchases, Duet uses Link, Stripe's digital wallet: it confirms the item with you, Link asks you to approve the spend, and it pays with a virtual card so your real card number is not shared. It can also check out with Shopify's Shop Pay. Signing in to sites with logins saved in 1Password is listed as coming soon.

Approvals and Safety

Duet reads, drafts and prepares work on its own, but it shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits for approval before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything. Some actions are off-limits even with approval, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts. You can disconnect any app at any time.

The announcement lists these safeguards:

• Credentials follow the design of Claude Managed Agents, so Duet never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens.
• Actions are approved by the same auto mode classifier used in Claude and Claude Code.
• Prompt-injection defences come from Anthropic's browser-use research.
• A new classifier and safety system prompt reject requests to share the strictest tier of information, including credit card numbers and government ID. Health or personal-finance details go out only when you explicitly tell Duet to send them.
• Red teams and an outside firm penetration-tested it, and it is covered by Anthropic's public bug bounty.

Usage Limits and Known Gaps

During the preview, Duet shares your plan's usage limits with the rest of Claude and uses them differently from a normal chat. Its background checks count, and big tasks such as a financial model or a deck take more model turns.

Anthropic is open about the preview's limits:

• It may misread a thread, miscalibrate what is urgent, or miss something that arrives between check-ins.
• It was built around work, so personal errands like booking tickets are weaker.
• It cannot yet show you its browser.
• It lives in its own app, separate from the main Claude app, for now.

How to Get Claude Duet

1. Make sure you have a Claude Pro or Max plan and are in the US.
2. Join the waitlist from the Claude Duet page. Anthropic emails you when your access is ready.
3. Install the iOS or Android app, or open it at claude.ai on a computer. Duet picks up the memory, skills and connected apps already in your Claude account.

Other labs sell similar always-on agents with their own cloud computers; one example is Grok Bot: plans, usage limits and alternatives.

FAQ

Is Claude Duet free? No separate price has been announced. It is included in Claude Pro and Max during the research preview and draws on the same usage limits.

Is Claude Duet available outside the US? Not yet. The preview starts with Pro and Max users in the US.

Can Claude Duet spend money on its own? No. Payments need your approval, and Link asks you to approve each spend. Trading securities and moving money between accounts are blocked even with approval.

How is Claude Duet different from Claude? The Claude app waits for you to open a chat. Duet comes to you with a morning brief and messages when something needs you, and it works in the background on its own computer.

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Sources

• Introducing Claude Duet (Anthropic, Oct 21, 2026)
• Claude Duet product page and FAQ

Prepared with automated editorial assistance and checked on October 23, 2026 against Anthropic's Claude Duet announcement and product page. Claude Duet was not used for this article.