Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an app in which Claude works as a proactive agent: it brings the user what needs attention, finishes tasks in the background and asks before it acts on their behalf. Access runs through a waitlist, starting with US subscribers on the Pro and Max plans.
Anthropic built Claude Duet around Claude Opus 5.5 and ships it as an app for iOS and Android as well as on claude.ai. Every morning it delivers a short digest of the top items from linked apps, then polls those accounts every few hours and pings the user only when something warrants a look. Anthropic says the spacing is on purpose, because constant polling would drain plan limits far quicker. Jobs execute on a virtual machine with a browser of its own, and the user's laptop or phone can stay switched off.
Any outgoing message, payment, signature or deletion is previewed first: Duet lays out the precise action and holds until the user approves it. A few things stay off-limits even with approval, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts. Purchases go through Link, Stripe's digital wallet: the user approves the spend and Link pays with a virtual card, so the real card number isn't shared. Duet can also pay at online stores with Shop Pay from Shopify. Credential handling follows the design of Claude Managed Agents, so Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens.
A new classifier and safety system prompt check each message and are designed to reject requests to share the strictest tier of information, such as credit card numbers and government ID, while health or personal-finance details go out only when the user has explicitly told Claude Duet to send them. Anthropic says red teams and an outside firm penetration tested the app and that it falls under the company's public bug bounty program.
Duet can use any of the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. Anthropic's examples include checking QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and drafting reminders, filling in payroll in Gusto, and drafting a LinkedIn job posting that is published only after the user edits and approves it.
For this research preview, Claude Duet is included in the Pro and Max plans. Anthropic charges $20 a month for Pro, or $200 a year billed up front, and from $100 a month for Max, before tax. Duet draws on the same usage limits as the rest of Claude, and the background checks count against them. Bigger jobs, such as a financial model or a deck, take more model turns and use up more of the allowance.
Anthropic says this early version might still misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent, that personal errands such as booking tickets are less reliable than work tasks, and that it can't yet show the user its browser. For now Duet lives in its own app, separate from the main Claude app, and the company says what it learns from early users will shape how the two fit together. Still to come are a richer visual editor for designing and previewing a Shopify storefront before anything goes live and, with the user's permission, sign-in through logins saved in 1Password.
