Built on Opus 5.5, Claude Duet watches your connected apps, sends a morning brief, takes on tasks in its own cloud computer, and asks for approval before anything sensitive. It launched October 21, 2026 as a US-only research preview, by waitlist, on Pro and Max plans.
2026-10-22 · by Moe Ameen
Anthropic introduced Claude Duet on October 21, 2026 — a standalone, proactive agent the product page describes as one that "understands what needs your attention." Instead of waiting for a prompt, Duet connects to your apps, checks them periodically, and surfaces what needs your attention: a short morning brief with drafted next steps, then alerts through the day when something comes up. It runs on Opus 5.5 and lives in its own app for iOS and Android, as well as on the web at claude.ai.
Duet works in the cloud on its own virtual machine with its own browser, so it can carry out tasks without local access to your computer — from light admin like setting up a meeting to heavier jobs like building a dashboard or a small web app, reporting back when it's done. Anthropic says it connects to more than 6,000 connectors and plugins, naming Gmail, Slack, Stripe, and QuickBooks among them, and that it carries over the memory, skills, and connected apps from your existing Claude account so setup is light. Before any sensitive action — sending a message, making a payment, signing a document, or deleting a file — it pauses and asks for approval, and it shows what it has done and is doing so you can steer it. Anthropic also notes it doesn't see passwords or logins and runs a dedicated classifier and safety prompt to guard against leaking sensitive information.
At launch, Duet is an early research preview, available by waitlist to Pro and Max subscribers in the United States; Team and Enterprise plans aren't included yet. There's no separate charge during the preview — Duet shares your existing plan's usage limits, and its background checks count toward them. Anthropic has acknowledged the agent can still misjudge what's urgent and says it will keep tuning it on early-user feedback. Coverage positioned the launch against other proactive consumer agents, including Meta's and OpenAI's.
Claude Duet and Kompozy both run on the idea of a proactive agent — but they point it at opposite halves of a creator's day. Duet watches your inbox, calendar, and tools and tees up the next action on your *work*. [Kompozy](/) runs the same proactive posture on your *content*: its [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) pipeline generates the week's posts, routes them through a per-post review queue, and schedules and publishes across the eight social platforms plus blog and email — without you prompting each piece. If Duet is the agent that tells you what needs doing today, Kompozy is the agent that actually makes and ships the content.
The practical pairing: let Duet do what it's genuinely good at — surface the ideas worth posting from your Slack and email, draft a rough brief, keep your calendar clear — then hand that brief to Kompozy, which Duet can't substitute for. Kompozy writes the copy under a [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) so it stays on-voice, generates the formats a general agent can't (Persona Shorts and avatar video, brand-exact carousels, quote graphics, photo posts, a blog, a newsletter), and fans one source idea into 25-plus on-brand outputs published everywhere. Duet manages the attention; Kompozy manufactures and distributes the output. Two proactive agents, two different jobs — and the content half is the one that fills a feed.
Claude Duet is a proactive AI agent from Anthropic, launched October 21, 2026, described on its product page as "a proactive agent that understands what needs your attention." It connects to your apps, checks them periodically, sends a morning brief, and takes on tasks in its own cloud computer — asking for your approval before sensitive actions like sending messages or making payments. It runs on Opus 5.5 in a standalone app for iOS and Android and on the web at claude.ai.
At launch Duet is an early research preview with no separate charge — it is available by waitlist to Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the United States and shares your existing plan's usage limits, with its background checks counting toward them. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet.
No. Duet is a general proactive assistant — it can draft messages, set up meetings, and build things like dashboards or small web apps, but it does not generate short-form video, carousels, quote graphics, or blogs, and it does not schedule or publish to social platforms. For on-brand content generation and cross-platform publishing you need a content engine such as Kompozy, which many creators pair with a general agent.
Anthropic says Duet works with more than 6,000 connectors and plugins, including Gmail, Slack, Stripe, and QuickBooks, and that it carries over the memory, skills, and connected apps from your existing Claude account. It runs tasks in a cloud virtual machine with its own browser, so it does not need local access to your computer.