What changed
Anthropic’s 21 October 2026 announcement says Claude Duet brings forward what needs your attention, carries out tasks you hand it, and continues on a cloud computer after you close your laptop or phone. Before a message, a payment, a signature, or a deletion, Anthropic says it shows the action and waits. Reading, drafting, and preparing can proceed in the meantime. The product page says the preview is powered by Opus 5.5.
The product FAQ says memory, skills, and connectors from your Claude account carry into one thread, reached by text or voice with no prompts or setup. Finished work can come back as a doc, sheet, or deck. The Claude app waits until you open a chat. The FAQ says Duet sends a morning brief, flags the inbox and calendar, takes tasks by message, and reaches out when one is done or needs approval. The announcement says that brief is a short note on the most important items across connected apps, and that handed-off work can be scheduling a meeting or a larger job such as a dashboard that draws on dozens of tools, a financial or sales forecast, a prototype, or a web app.
Who can join
Anthropic says it built Duet for professionals and small business owners with more to track than they can follow, and designed it to decide what needs you, what can wait, and when to ask first. @claudeai said the preview can still misjudge what is urgent, and that Anthropic will keep tuning that judgment from what early users report. The product FAQ says Duet may misread a thread, miscalibrate urgency, and miss something that arrives between check-ins.
Two comments Anthropic published are the concrete picture it offers of that judgment. Broker Jess Provencher, it says, got a morning rundown that flagged a property showing on the wrong day without her asking. Brand strategist Mya Dalton, it says, had a call with a potential client. Duet prepared a brief, noticed the call fell right before her flight, and offered to move it. Anthropic quotes her: “I didn’t realize that it was right before my flight,” and “I love that proactivity.” Further notes on the same page, about staff to-do lists, prototypes, and a restaurant owner’s invoices, are Anthropic’s accounts too. It says that owner’s business has about 110 employees.
The product FAQ calls Duet a standalone app for iOS and Android, and says that on a computer you open it on the web at claude.ai. The announcement says that, for now, it lives in its own app, separate from the main Claude app.
| Term | What Anthropic states |
|---|---|
| Who can join | Waitlist for Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US |
| Plans not included yet | Team and Enterprise, with no date given |
| Price | Included in Pro and Max for this preview |
| Usage | Same limits as the rest of Claude. Background checks count. A financial model or a deck uses more model turns and background work |
| Where it runs | iOS, Android, and claude.ai on the web |
| How access arrives | Email when Duet is ready for that person |
How to try it
@claudeai’s 21 October posts point Pro and Max subscribers in the US to the waitlist on the product page. The announcement says Anthropic is starting with those users and will email when Duet is ready. The pages state no wait time after you join.
Anthropic says a virtual machine with its own browser keeps working while your laptop or phone is off, then notifies you when a task is done or needs review. It also says Duet cannot yet show you that browser. Connected accounts, it says, are checked every few hours, because nonstop checking would use the plan limits much faster, and you can say what you want to hear about and how often.
The product page says you can see what Duet has done and is doing and can steer it, and that approvals, logins, and safety checks run in your own cloud computer. Anthropic’s announcement says you can disconnect any app Duet can reach, and that trading securities and moving money between accounts stay off-limits even if you approve.
Anthropic says Duet can use the more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace, including apps already on the account. Named jobs include Gmail and Slack replies, QuickBooks or Stripe invoice reminders, and Gusto payroll with hours, bonuses, and reimbursements filled in. Duet drafts a job posting and posts it to LinkedIn only after you edit and approve it. Other named jobs are agreements through Docusign, HubSpot follow-ups, a Canva campaign, and setting up, designing, and managing a Shopify store. A richer visual editor that previews the storefront before anything goes live is described as coming soon, with no date. For a business purchase, Anthropic says you can use Link, Stripe’s digital wallet. Duet confirms the item, Link asks you to approve the spend, and a virtual card pays so the real card number is not shared. Shop Pay is named for checkout at online stores.
What is still open
@claudeai said Duet never directly sees your passwords. The announcement says credential handling follows the Claude Managed Agents design, so Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens. A new classifier and safety prompt check each message. They are designed to reject requests to share the strictest tier of information, including credit card numbers and government IDs. Health information and personal finances go out only when you explicitly instruct Duet to send them.
Anthropic says its auto mode classifier approves actions, and that this is the safeguard against steps you did not ask for, the same safeguard it names for Claude and Claude Code. The approval you give before a send, a payment, a signature, or a deletion is a separate stop. Anthropic says prompt-injection defenses come from its browser-use research, and that its trustworthy-agents framework also guides Claude Code and Claude in Chrome. It says red teams and an outside firm ran a penetration test, and that the public bug bounty covers Duet. @claudeai said more on the safety approach is coming. The Duet pages include no findings from that test.
Anthropic says personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker than the work tasks it built Duet around. Sign-in with logins saved in 1Password is described as coming soon, with no date. The pages give no general-availability date. Dollar figures on the product page’s café walkthrough are scenario copy.
Source
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Sources and editorial approach
This article relies on Anthropic’s Claude Duet product page and the 21 October 2026 announcement, “Introducing Claude Duet,” plus two @claudeai posts from that day. Checked 22 October 2026. The app, the waitlist, connectors, payments, and the usage meter were not used. A later safety write-up Anthropic said it would share does not appear on these pages. The Duet pages do not print Pro or Max dollar prices.