Claude Duet: What Anthropic's Proactive Agent Does and What It Costs

October 22, 2026. Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet on October 21, a separate app in which Claude works as a proactive agent: it messages you first about what needs your attention, takes tasks by text or voice, keeps working on its own cloud computer when your phone is off, and asks before it sends, pays, signs or deletes anything, according to Anthropic's announcement. There is no separate fee during the preview. Duet is included in Claude Pro, which costs $20 a month or $17 on annual billing, and in Max, from $100 a month, for US subscribers who join the waitlist, and it draws on the same usage limits as the rest of Claude. Anthropic says it built Duet for professionals and small business owners, so here is what it does, what it will not do, and what it really costs to run.

What Anthropic launched on October 21

1. A separate app. Duet is a standalone app for iOS and Android and opens on the web at claude.ai, per its product page. It lives apart from the main Claude app for now.
2. Waitlist, US only. The preview starts with Pro and Max subscribers in the US. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet.
3. Built on Claude Opus 5.5. Anthropic says the point is judgment: deciding what needs you, what can wait and when to check with you first.
4. A morning brief, then quiet. Each morning it sends a short brief on the most important items across your connected apps. During the day it checks those accounts every few hours and messages you only when something needs you, and you can tell it what you want to hear about and how often.
5. Background work. Duet has a virtual machine with its own browser, so a task keeps running after you close the app, and you get a notification when it is done or needs review. It returns finished work such as a doc, a sheet or a deck.
6. Your Claude context. It carries over your memory, skills and connected apps from your Claude account, in one ongoing thread.
7. More than 6,000 connectors and plugins from the Claude Marketplace are available to it.

What it can do for a small business

Anthropic lists jobs that read like an operations assistant's week: find the Gmail and Slack messages you missed and draft replies; check QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and draft reminders; prepare and run payroll in Gusto with hours, bonuses and reimbursements filled in; draft a job post and publish it to LinkedIn once you approve; prepare agreements and send them for signature through Docusign; draft follow-ups from HubSpot deal history; turn a launch into a Canva campaign; and set up and manage a Shopify store, with a richer visual editor promised. It can also buy things for the business through Link, Stripe's wallet, which pays with a virtual card so your real card number is not shared, and through Shop Pay. Signing in with logins saved in 1Password is listed as coming soon.

Two early testers show the pattern. Amin Ebrahimi, who owns Shahs of Kabob in South Florida with about 110 employees, used it for accounting, customer support and marketing and worked through his invoices store by store. Jess Provencher, a broker, had Duet flag a property showing that sat on her calendar on the wrong day, without being asked.

What it will not do, and where it falls short

Duet reads, drafts and prepares work on its own, but before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits for your approval. Some things are off-limits even with approval, such as trading securities or moving money between accounts. A new classifier and safety system prompt check each message: Duet refuses to share the strictest tier of information, such as credit card numbers and government IDs, and passes health or personal finance details only when you have explicitly told it to. Anthropic says Duet never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens, an auto mode classifier approves its actions, and the product has been through red teams and an external penetration test.

Anthropic is also plain about the gaps. Duet may misread a thread or miscalibrate what is urgent, it can miss something that arrives between check-ins, personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker because it was built around work, and it cannot yet show you its browser.

What it costs: the usage limits are the price

Duet has no fee of its own during the preview, so the real cost is your plan's allowance. On the Claude pricing page, Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month on annual billing ($200 up front), and Max starts at $100 a month with a choice of 5x or 20x the usage of Pro. Duet shares that allowance with the rest of Claude and uses it differently from a chat: its background checks count toward the limit, and big tasks such as a financial model or a deck take more model turns. Anthropic says it checks your accounts every few hours precisely because checking nonstop would use up limits much faster. An owner who also uses Claude heavily for writing or coding should expect the morning brief and the background tasks to compete for the same allowance, which is when Max starts to make sense.

Duet, dots and Muse

Duet is the third big personal agent in two months. Meta's Muse launched in September and topped Apple's App Store, and Mark Zuckerberg said on Meta's October 21 earnings call that more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse agents, CNBC reported. OpenAI introduced dots on September 29 and began rolling them out on its Pro, Business Premium and Enterprise plans in eligible markets, per its launch post; a dot's cloud computer can be opened at any time to inspect its work, while Anthropic says Duet cannot yet show you its browser. CNBC describes Muse as aimed mainly at consumers and dots as straddling consumer and enterprise, while Anthropic pitches Duet at the workplace. Our guides to OpenAI dots and Meta Muse for businesses cover what each costs and how it reaches your business.

What it means for operators

For a US owner already paying for Claude Pro, trying Duet adds nothing to the bill: the brief, the invoice chasing and the meeting prep come out of the plan you already have. It is not a replacement for automations that must run on their own. Every send, payment and signature waits for a tap from you, it checks in every few hours rather than reacting in real time, and Team and Enterprise accounts cannot use it yet. Before you join:

1. Join the waitlist with the Claude account you already use, because Duet inherits its memory, skills and connected apps.
2. Connect only what you would hand to a new assistant in week one, such as email, calendar and your invoicing tool, and add payroll or contracts later. You can disconnect any app.
3. Tell it what to flag. Name the senders, invoices and calendar conflicts you care about so the brief stays short.
4. Watch your usage in the first week and move to Max only if the background checks crowd out your other Claude work.
5. Keep anything customer-facing on purpose-built systems. Anthropic describes Duet working your own apps with your approval, not answering your customers' phone calls.

If you want the parts of the job that should run without approvals, such as answering every inbound call and booking the job, see our AI call answering for home services. For back-office workflows built across your own stack, see our AI automation services, or hire an AI engineer to build and run them for your team.