Claude Duet: What Anthropic’s Proactive Agent Does, Who Can Get It, and What It Costs

Claude Duet is Anthropic's proactive agent app, opened as a research preview on 21 October 2026. It sends you a morning brief, checks your connected apps every few hours and works on its own computer in the cloud. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it asks you. It runs on Claude Opus 5.5, and only US Pro and Max subscribers on a waitlist can use it.

The launch post sells the judgment. The help center tells you the rest. It lists what Duet cannot do yet, why your invite might never arrive, and how its background checks spend your usage limits. This guide covers both, plus the question nobody ranking for it answers yet: how Duet differs from Claude Cowork, and what a Mac user actually gets.

The Key Takeaways

• What it is: a separate Claude app that comes to you first, with a morning brief, check-ins every few hours, and tasks it finishes on its own cloud computer.
• Who gets it: Pro or Max, a US account and a waitlist invite. Team and Enterprise are not included yet.
• What it costs: no extra fee during the preview, but it draws on your five-hour and weekly limits, and its background checks count too.
• The hard stops: it asks before it sends, pays, signs or deletes, and it will never trade securities or move money between accounts, even with your approval.
• The Mac gap: Duet ships on iOS, Android and claude.ai. There is no Mac app, while Dots, Muse and Grok Bot all have one.

What Is Claude Duet?

Claude Duet is a Claude you message like a person, and it messages you back when something needs you. The normal Claude app waits for you to open a chat. Duet reverses that. It reads your connected apps, decides what matters, and starts the first steps before you ask.

Anthropic built Duet for "professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track", in the words of its launch announcement. It is a standalone app on iPhone and Android, and it also opens on the web at claude.ai. It lives apart from the main Claude app for now. Anthropic says early users will shape how the two fit together.

Anthropic's official account announced Duet on launch day with a demo video:

We’re opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent.

It comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.

— Claude (@claudeai) October 21, 2026

One naming note. Search "claude duet" and you will also hit unrelated projects that share the word, including an open-source tool on GitHub. None of them is Anthropic's product. If you are new to the category, our guide to what an AI agent actually is covers the vocabulary Duet assumes you already have.

What Duet Does All Day

Claude Duet does three jobs: it briefs you, it watches, and it finishes tasks you hand it. All three run on Claude Opus 5.5. You cannot pick another model, and Duet decides how much effort each job needs.

The Morning Brief and Check-Ins

Every morning, Duet looks across your email and calendar and sends a short brief on what most needs you. It can already start the first steps, such as drafting replies for you to review. Through the day it keeps tabs on your apps and follows up on threads that have gone quiet.

It does not watch continuously. Anthropic's announcement says Duet checks your connected accounts every few hours, "because checking nonstop would use up your plan's limits much faster." Something urgent can arrive between two checks. You can tell Duet what you want to hear about and how often.

Tasks, Make and Channels

Duet keeps everything in one ongoing thread, typed or spoken. A quick reply and a week-long project start in the same place. You can open separate channels for different topics, but they share one memory, so treat them as folders, not private rooms.

The Tasks tab lists what Duet is working on and flags anything that needs your input. Finished files, such as a research brief, a financial model, a slide deck or a dashboard, land in the Make tab. Duet may suggest a task looks finished, but only you can mark it complete. The work runs on a virtual machine with its own browser, so it continues with your phone and laptop switched off.

Mike Krieger, who builds at Anthropic Labs, described a few weeks of real use in his launch-day post:

We're opening Claude Duet today as a research preview, starting with a waitlist. It's our take on giving everyone a trusted partner with your work.

I've been using it for a few weeks, at work and at home. It drafted questions for a fireside chat, watched Slack over the weekend so I could log off, and told me about the new @nealstephenson book — and then ordered it from my local bookstore once I asked.

We've found Opus 5.5 was our first model with the judgment to be proactive in the right ways. Here's what that's looked like.

— Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) October 21, 2026

Connectors and Purchases

Duet starts with everything you already set up in Claude: your memory, your skills and your connected apps. Anthropic says it can use the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. The help center names Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Docusign and Calendly. If you have not connected anything yet, our list of the best Claude connectors is a sensible first pass. For a site with no connector, Duet uses its own cloud browser.

Duet can also buy things. It pays through Link, Stripe's wallet, or Shop Pay, Shopify's wallet, and you connect both inside Duet, not in the connectors directory. Each purchase uses a one-time card that only works for that purchase. Link needs a US payment method and cannot make recurring payments. Duet sees the card type and last four digits, never the full card number.

A First Job to Give Claude Duet

Start Duet on one recurring chore with a clear "draft, don't send" boundary, so you can judge its work before it touches a customer. Anthropic's own example request is checking Stripe for unpaid invoices and drafting reminders. Copy this and swap in your own apps:

Every weekday morning, check Stripe and QuickBooks for invoices that are more than 7 days overdue. For each one, give me the customer, the amount and the due date, and link the invoice. Draft a short, friendly reminder email for each customer, but do not send anything. Message me only if an overdue invoice is over $1,000 or older than 30 days.

Read the first two briefs against your own records. If Duet misses an invoice or misreads a due date, tell it in the thread. That correction is worth more than a longer first prompt.

What Duet Will Not Do Without You

Claude Duet reads, drafts and prepares on its own, but it stops before four kinds of action: sending a message, making a payment, signing a document and deleting anything. It shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits. If you cannot approve right away, it finishes the rest of the task and brings the approval back to you later.

A few things stay off-limits even with your approval. Anthropic's help center lists trading securities, moving money between accounts and accessing someone else's account. So Duet can chase an unpaid invoice, but it cannot rebalance a portfolio or sweep cash into savings.

Anthropic says Duet never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens. When a website in its browser asks for a password, you type it into a separate form on your own device. A new classifier checks each outgoing message and rejects requests to share the strictest tier of data, such as credit card numbers and government IDs. Health and personal finance details go out only when you have explicitly told Duet to send them. Sign-in through 1Password is listed as coming soon.

Disconnecting an app stops future access, but Duet keeps its memory of what it already read. Duet can also search your past Claude chats outside projects. The Search and reference chats switch in Claude's memory settings turns that off.

What Claude Duet Can't Do Yet

Claude Duet's research preview comes with a list of documented limits, and two of them change how you should use it. First, you cannot watch or take over its browser, so a stuck web task is a black box. Second, it checks on a timer, so it is not an alarm for anything time-critical.

The rest are narrower. You cannot choose the model. Duet cannot see the files on your computer or all of your projects. It can read your work in Claude but cannot change it. It does not phone or text other people, though it can send email from connected accounts once you approve. Slack works with limits. And Microsoft 365 is not available yet.

That last point is worth checking twice. Anthropic's product page shows a Microsoft / Office 365 logo in its strip of connectors. The help center says plainly that "Microsoft 365 isn't available yet." The help center is the operative document. If your business runs on Outlook and Teams, Duet is not ready for you.

Early hands-on testing points to rough edges too. Dan Shipper at Every, which got two weeks of early access, called Duet "the first personal agent I'd call a pro tool." He also listed its weak spots. Its email drafts were worse than those of OpenAI's Dot. Its scheduled runs could not reach his custom connectors. And there was "no real voice mode yet, just transcription."

Who Can Get Claude Duet and How to Join the Waitlist

You can use Claude Duet if you have three things: a Claude Pro or Max plan, a Claude account in the US, and an invitation from the waitlist. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet. The steps from Anthropic's help center:

1. Open the Claude Duet product page at claude.com and select Join the waitlist.
2. Enter your name and email. Use the email on your Claude account. The form also asks for a company name.
3. Choose your Claude plan and your phone, iPhone or Android. Optionally, say what you do and what you would hand off first.
4. Select Submit and wait for an invitation email. Invites go out in waves, with no date promised.
5. Open the invitation on your phone and follow the setup steps, using the Apple or Google account tied to that same email.
6. Open Duet and sign in with your Claude account. The app can take a few minutes to appear after you accept.

Why You Might Not Have Access Yet

The reason you can fix is an email mismatch: the address you gave the waitlist must match your Claude account and the Apple or Google account on your phone. Anthropic's other three reasons are out of your hands: the invite waves have not reached you yet, your Claude account is outside the US, or you are on a Team or Enterprise plan. The mismatch is the trap: "Access is tied to the email address you gave us," the help center says. A work email on the waitlist and a personal email on your Claude account means no Duet.

Readers in the UK and the EU cannot get Duet during the preview. Anthropic has not given a date for other countries.

What Claude Duet Costs: No Fee, Paid in Usage

Claude Duet costs nothing extra during the research preview. It is included with Pro and Max. The real price is usage: Duet spends the same five-hour session and weekly limits as your chats, at the same rate, and its background work counts too.

The morning brief and the check-ins every few hours all run whether you open the app or not. Larger jobs, such as a financial model or a slide deck, need more model turns. Anthropic's Claude Duet help article warns that "you may reach your limits sooner than with chat alone." On Pro, where limits are tightest, that is the cost to watch. Our explainer on Claude usage limits shows how the session and weekly caps work, and Claude Pro vs Max helps if Duet pushes you toward an upgrade.

Anthropic softens the start. When you are admitted, you get one full limit reset of both your five-hour and weekly limits. It is available until 30 November 2026, so use it before then.

Claude Duet vs Claude Cowork

Claude Duet and Claude Cowork are both Anthropic agents, but they start work from opposite ends. Cowork is a task you start: you describe an outcome in the Claude app and it works through it, with access to files on your computer. Duet starts things for you: it watches your apps, briefs you and messages you when something needs a decision.

The short version: if your work lives in files on your Mac, Claude Cowork is the tool, and it is available today on every paid plan. If your work lives in an inbox, a calendar and a stack of business apps, Duet is the better fit, once your invite arrives.

Claude Duet on a Mac

Claude Duet has no Mac app. On a Mac you use it at claude.ai in your browser, and the waitlist form asks only whether your phone is an iPhone or Android. That makes Duet the odd one out. OpenAI's dots run in the ChatGPT desktop app. Meta's Muse has a Mac version that can drive other apps. Grok Bot ships a macOS app for Apple silicon and Intel.

The gap matters less than it sounds. Duet works on its own cloud computer, so it does not need your Mac to be on, and it is built to reach you on your phone. What you lose is a native window and any access to files on your machine. Anthropic says Duet "can't see all of your projects or the files on your computer", so a Mac-native workflow still belongs to Cowork.

Claude on Your Mac Without the Waitlist

If what you actually want is Claude on your Mac today, not a proactive agent at some point in the coming months, skip the queue. You do not have to wait for an invite or live in the US. Fello AI puts Claude in a native app for Mac, iPhone and iPad, next to GPT, Gemini and Grok. Ask a second model the same question without opening another tab. It will not watch your inbox for you. It answers the moment you ask.

Claude Duet vs OpenAI Dots, Meta Muse and Grok Bot

Claude Duet is the cheapest way into a proactive agent if you already pay for Claude, and the narrowest by region. Only Meta's Muse starts free. All four run on a cloud computer and ask before consequential actions. The differences are price, region and devices. Prices below were checked on each vendor's own pricing or help page on 23 October 2026.

Early users who run both are already comparing them. Kieran Klaassen, who works on Every's frontier team, posted this on launch day:

Claude Duet dethroned my OpenAI Dot.
I still use both but think:

- Duet is more thoughtful and deep
- Duet does better proactive work
- Dot still wins using an many computers and connecting all together

Exited to see where this one goes!

— Kieran Klaassen (@kieranklaassen) October 21, 2026

For the full rival picture, see our breakdowns of OpenAI Dots, Meta's Muse agent and Grok Bot.

Should You Join the Claude Duet Waitlist?

Yes, if you are a US Pro or Max subscriber whose day runs through Gmail, a calendar and business apps like QuickBooks, Stripe or Shopify. Joining costs nothing, the one-time limit reset gives your first weeks some headroom, and the approval rules are strict enough to hand it real admin work. Use the same email as your Claude account, or the invite will not reach you.

Skip it for now if you run on Microsoft 365, need instant alerts, or want your agent to work with files on your Mac. Anthropic documents all three as current limits, and Cowork already covers the last one. Outside the US the decision is made for you, so the useful move is to watch the waitlist page for a wider rollout.

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