Anthropic Launches Claude Duet, an Always-On AI Agent, as Waitlist Preview for US Pro and Max Subscribers

Anthropic on Wednesday, Oct. 21, opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an agent that watches a user's connected apps and acts without waiting for a prompt. It is aimed at professionals and small business owners.

Access runs through a waitlist. Only Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US are eligible. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet.

What Duet does

Each morning, Duet sends a short brief on the most important items across a user's connected apps. During the day it checks those apps and messages the user only when something needs attention.

Users can also hand it work by typing or voice in a single ongoing thread. Anthropic lists scheduling meetings, building dashboards with dozens of tools, creating financial or sales forecasts, prototyping, and building web apps.

Duet carries over the memory, skills and connectors from a user's existing Claude account. It runs on its own cloud computer with a browser, so it keeps working after the user closes the app. It sends a notification when a task is finished or needs a decision.

The app ships as a standalone program on iOS and Android and is also available at claude.ai. It is built around Claude Opus 5.5, which Anthropic released in late September.

Where Anthropic drew the lines

Before Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, Anthropic says it shows the user the action and waits for approval. A few actions are off-limits even with approval, including trading securities and moving money between accounts.

Anthropic also says it added a dedicated classifier and safety system prompt designed to reject requests to share its strictest tier of information, such as credit card numbers. Users can disconnect any app Duet can reach.

The company is blunt about the limits. Duet "may misread a thread or miscalibrate what's urgent, and it can miss something that arrives between checking in with you," Anthropic said. It is also not as strong at personal errands such as booking tickets.

That last caveat has a mechanical cause. Duet checks connected accounts every few hours, not continuously, because Anthropic says constant checking would burn through plan limits much faster. It is not real-time supervision.

Cost and access

There is no separate price. Duet is included in Pro and Max, but it shares usage limits with the rest of Claude. Background checks count against those limits, and larger jobs such as building a financial model or a slide deck use more of them. Anthropic warns users could hit their caps sooner than with chat alone.

Invitations will go out in waves, and Anthropic said it will email waitlisted users when access is ready. Karan Ahuja, who leads Duet's development, wrote on X that people are being let in "as quickly as possible."

Anthropic's listed uses draw on the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. They include chasing unpaid invoices in QuickBooks or Stripe, running payroll in Gusto, routing agreements through Docusign, and drafting follow-ups from HubSpot deal history.

A rivalry with Meta and OpenAI

Duet goes up against Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots, both already out. Apptopia estimates Muse had more than 14 million installs as of Wednesday. The firm also found that Claude users who installed Muse were using Claude more than before, though for fewer minutes per day than they spent in Meta's app.

The launch landed on the day of Meta's earnings report. Ahuja led product management for Meta Superintelligence Labs until July, according to his LinkedIn, and started at Anthropic in August. He wrote on X that he has been using Duet to build Duet.

Meta's side responded with humor, not a statement. Alexandr Wang, who heads Meta Superintelligence Labs, posted a meme pointing to Duet's similarity to Muse. Meta has not publicly detailed any claim beyond that.

Mike Krieger, a co-lead of Anthropic's Labs team, pitched the product's judgment in the launch video. "It can have the discernment and judgment around when to be proactive, when to act on your behalf," he said.

This is a product with standing access to a person's email, calendar, invoices and payroll tools. Anthropic's answer is the approval gate, and whether it holds up is a question the preview is meant to test. The company calls this an early version.

Business Insider reported that Anthropic is approaching an initial public offering that could value it at as much as $2 trillion, which raises the commercial stakes of getting a consumer agent right.

Anthropic says it plans to extend Duet to Team and Enterprise plans. It has not announced a date for that, a Duet API, or a timeline for opening the waitlist beyond the US.