Anthropic launches Claude Duet, a proactive agent app taking on Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots
What's the deal? Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet on October 21, 2026: a standalone app in which Claude works as a proactive agent. Instead of waiting for prompts, it sends a short morning brief on what matters across a user's connected apps, checks those apps every few hours, messages only when something needs attention, and keeps working on tasks in the background.
How does it work? Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5 inside its own cloud virtual machine with a browser, so it keeps going after the user closes a laptop or phone. It carries over memory, skills and connectors from the user's Claude account and can handle anything from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, financial or sales forecasts, decks and web apps. Reuters reports it plugs into more than 6,000 connectors in the Claude Marketplace and can make purchases via Stripe's Link wallet and Shopify's Shop Pay.
Who gets it? US Pro and Max subscribers, via a waitlist, on iOS, Android and claude.ai. It is included in those plans and shares their usage limits, with background checks counting towards them. Team and Enterprise plans are not covered yet.
The guardrails: Duet drafts and prepares work on its own, but shows the exact action and waits for approval before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything. Some actions, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts, are off-limits even with approval. Anthropic concedes it "might misread a thread or miscalibrate what's urgent" and is weaker on personal errands like booking tickets.
Why now? Always-on consumer agents are the new battleground. OpenAI launched its always-on Dots agents last month, and Meta's Muse agent has drawn millions of downloads. The same day, Anthropic also made Claude Security re-scan connected code repositories continuously as changes land, in public beta on Claude Enterprise.
The signal: Anthropic, long the enterprise and coding favourite, is now going after professionals and small business owners directly with an agent that comes to them first.
Read more: Anthropic, CNBC, VentureBeat, Reuters via Investing.com, Claude on X
Image credit: Anthropic
