Unlike chatbots we’re used to that only respond to your prompts, Claude Duet proactively reaches out with a morning briefing or notifications of important events, and identifies tasks that require your attention.
AI developer Anthropic, known for its highly-popular Claude chatbot, introduced a research preview of the Claude Duet app, where AI bot works as a proactive agent.
Duet runs on the Claude Opus 5.5 model in a cloud-based virtual machine, so it can continue performing tasks in real time even when your phone or computer is turned off. Its main purpose is to help small business owners and professionals of various types who juggle multiple tasks daily prioritize tasks and keep track of the most important ones.
At the same time, the agent does not perform important or sensitive actions autonomously. It requests user confirmation in advance before sending messages, signing documents, or making payments. Financial actions like securities trading and money transfers are blocked at the system level.
Here’s what the Duet agent can do. Each morning, it gives you a quick summary of important updates from your connected apps. During the day, it monitors those apps and alerts you when something needs your attention. You can also intentionally ask it to handle some specific tasks that require your extra attention, e.g. scheduling meetings, building dashboards, preparing financial or sales forecasts, creating prototypes, and developing web apps.
Anthropic team members have been among the early testers of the new function.
“Boris Cherny, who leads our Claude Code team, talks through his mental to-do list with Claude Duet on walks, instead of saving the work for his desk. Chelsea Larsson, who leads our model and product behavior design team, hands Claude Duet her to-do list before leaving to be with her kids and it saves the results for an evening report,” provided the examples Anthropic in its introductory announcement.
The tool is included in existing Claude Pro and Max subscriptions at no extra cost, using the account’s shared usage limits. Team and Enterprise plans are not yet supported. It is currently available to subscribers in the US through a waitlist. Duet will be offered as a standalone app for iOS and Android or accessible via the claude.ai website.
