Claude Duet explained: what Anthropic's new assistant does

Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, an assistant that works in the background instead of waiting for you to type a request. It looks at your connected apps, prepares work and leaves the final decision to you. It is not open to everyone yet.

Anthropic introduced Duet on 21 October. According to The Neuron's coverage, the assistant checks connected apps "every few hours rather than continuously" and prepares work for human review.

Duet is powered by Opus 5.5, an Anthropic model. It can use Claude's memory and skills. A cloud virtual machine, which is a computer running on Anthropic's servers, lets it carry on with browser tasks when your own devices are offline.

It can reach more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in Anthropic's Marketplace. These include Gmail, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto and HubSpot.

Anthropic says Duet needs your approval before it does any of these:

Two actions are barred even if you give permission: securities trading and transfers between financial accounts.

Anthropic also describes credential protections, automated checks, defences against prompt injection (hidden instructions planted in content to trick an AI) and filters for sensitive data.

Access is narrow for now. Duet is a research preview, an early version released to gather feedback, and you join through a waitlist. It is open to Pro and Max subscribers in the US. Team and Enterprise customers are excluded.

Background checks count against your existing plan limits. Anthropic has not published usage figures, so it is unclear how quickly Duet would use up your allowance. It has also not published task-completion rates.

How well Duet works in real business workflows is unconfirmed. Anthropic acknowledges it can misread conversations or urgency. You also cannot yet inspect its browser activity, so you will rely on the approval step to catch mistakes.

Duet is not the only assistant of this kind. Meta has Muse for Small Business, and OpenAI has Dots, which is rolling out to Pro and Business Premium customers.

If you are a US Pro or Max subscriber, you can join the waitlist. Duet will be available on dedicated mobile apps or on the web. Anthropic has not said when waitlist places will open.