Claude Duet Explained: Anthropic's Proactive Agent Preview

A research preview, not a public launch

We're opening a research preview of Claude Duet, a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent.

Anthropic described Claude Duet as an app that comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf. That is the whole public brief: a proactive agent with a confirmation step, shown so far only in a short preview.

No public build, download, or official product page has been published. Until Anthropic opens more than the preview, the announcement and that short video are the record of what Duet is supposed to do.

What it watches and what it does unprompted

It comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf.

In the preview, Duet looks across email, Slack, and your calendar, then interrupts only when something actually needs you. The same pass can assemble a morning briefing and carry background tasks while you are away from the app.

The check-in is part of the design, not an optional extra. Duet can prepare work and continue it in the background, and it is meant to confirm with you before it takes an action in your name.

• Signal, not a firehose

  Mail, Slack, and calendar are scanned so Duet can flag the items that need a decision.

• A morning briefing

  The preview includes a daily brief that gathers what changed overnight into one pass.

• Work that continues

  Tasks you assign can keep running after you leave, with a check before Duet acts for you.

Who is in line, and what is still unpublished

Access in this preview is a queue for Pro and Max subscribers in the United States. Anthropic has not published a separate price for Duet, a model card, context limits, or a description of the architecture behind the agent.

Set beside a normal Claude chat, Duet is the always-on layer: it initiates, briefs you, and keeps a task moving. Comparable proactive assistants from other labs are not part of this announcement, so any ranking would be guesswork. Open questions are the rollout beyond that United States queue, which accounts and tools the preview can actually reach, and when a public build or official page will exist.