Anthropic opens a research preview of Claude Duet, a proactive agent app

Anthropic has announced a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent. According to Anthropic, it brings you 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.

Anthropic says Duet is designed around Claude Opus 5.5, which it credits with the judgment to decide what needs the user, what can wait, and when to check first. It carries over the memory, skills and connected apps from the user's Claude account.

On safety, Anthropic says Duet never directly sees passwords, that a new classifier guards against sharing sensitive information, and that important decisions stay with the user. It says it will share more about its safety approach soon.

Anthropic says Duet works in its own cloud virtual machine with a browser, so it keeps going when the user's devices are off, and that it checks connected accounts every few hours rather than continuously to protect plan limits. It uses the 6,000-plus connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. Before sending a message, making a payment, signing a document or deleting anything it shows the action and waits for approval, and some actions, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts, are off-limits even with approval.

Duet is a standalone app for iOS and Android and is also available on claude.ai. It is offered through a waitlist on Pro and Max plans in the US and shares those plans' usage limits; Team and Enterprise are not included yet. Anthropic says it can still misjudge what is urgent, is weaker at personal errands than at work tasks, and that it will keep tuning it based on early users' feedback.