Anthropic unveils Claude Duet, a personal agent that works in the background
AI company Anthropic has opened a waitlist for US subscribers to its new personal agent, Claude Duet. It is designed to handle tasks in the background and competes with similar offerings from Meta and OpenAI.
AI company Anthropic on Wednesday announced Claude Duet, a personal agent released as a research preview. People can try it by joining a waitlist, which is currently open only to subscribers of the Claude chatbot in the US. The move puts Anthropic alongside rivals: Meta offers an agent called Muse, and OpenAI has Dots.
What the agent does
Anthropic describes Duet as a proactive assistant. Each day it prepares a short briefing with a list of action items drawn from the user's connected apps. It can also be given simple administrative jobs, such as scheduling meetings, as well as more complex ones: building dashboards, creating financial or sales forecasts, prototyping and developing web apps. The company says the agent will message the user only when something needs their attention, and that it checks before acting on the user's behalf.
Duet runs on Opus 5.5, one of the models Anthropic offers through Claude, and comes with standalone Android and iOS apps. It does not need a Claude session to be open: it runs on its own virtual machine and completes tasks in the background.
Pricing and limits
Once the agent reaches general availability, subscribers to the $20-a-month Pro plan will get access. OpenAI's Dots, by comparison, are currently available only to Pro-tier subscribers, whose plans start at $100 per month. Duet shares usage limits with the user's other Claude tools, including Code. To avoid exhausting those limits quickly, the agent checks connected accounts every few hours. Users will be able to set how often Duet messages them and on which topics.
Security
Anthropic says Duet uses a new classifier and system prompt meant to prevent leaks of sensitive information. The agent will never directly see passwords or sign-in tokens, and information related to health or personal finances is passed through only if the user explicitly tells Duet to share it. The company said it will share more about the safety protections in the coming days.
