Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, a standalone app with a personal AI agent running on the Opus 5.5 model. It does not wait for a prompt in a chat window: it takes on tasks, works through them in the background, keeps an eye on connected services and messages the user when a decision is needed.

The main audience is professionals and small business owners whose routine is spread across email, messengers, CRMs and payment tools. The product is still a research preview with access through a waitlist.

How Duet works

The agent gets its own virtual machine with a browser, so tasks keep running when the laptop is closed or the phone is off. Memory, skills and app connections are carried over from the regular Claude account. Everything happens in one ongoing conversation, by text or voice, and the agent sends a notification when a result is ready or a decision is required.

Proactive rather than chat-first

Every morning Duet compiles a digest of what matters, then checks connected accounts on its own every few hours. How often it interrupts and what it watches can be tuned right in the conversation. Through Claude Marketplace the agent can use more than 6,000 connectors and plugins.

  • find missed emails and messages in Gmail and Slack;
  • check unpaid invoices in Stripe;
  • draft a client email based on deal history in HubSpot;
  • put together a report, forecast, dashboard or web app prototype.

Limitations

At launch Duet is open only to Pro and Max subscribers in the US, via iOS and Android apps and the claude.ai web version. Anthropic openly warns that the agent may misread conversations and misjudge how urgent something is.

Our take

The market is moving fast from chatbots to background agents with their own browser and access to work tools. For businesses that is a question of trust: once an agent gets email, a CRM and payments, it needs least-privilege access, an action log and a clear rule on what it may do alone and what needs approval. For site and bot developers it is also a signal to prepare APIs and connectors these agents will use to work with their products. More details on Habr.