Anthropic has opened a research preview of Claude Duet, a proactive agent for professionals and small business owners who are tracking more work than they can finish. Each morning it sends a short brief on the most important items across connected apps, watches those apps through the day, and messages you only when something needs attention. You message it by text or voice and hand off tasks such as scheduling meetings, finding unpaid invoices, preparing payroll for review, getting contracts ready, or building a forecast, deck, or dashboard. It keeps working on its own computer in the cloud after you close the app. The launch arrives as OpenAI and Meta race to develop agents that can complete work on a user's behalf. Anthropic is opening Duet through a waitlist to US subscribers on Pro and Max plans. During the preview it is included in those plans and shares their usage limits, and Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet. Duet is a standalone app on iOS and Android and on claude.ai. It carries over memory, skills, and connected apps from an existing Claude account, and it is built around Claude Opus 5.5. Before Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document, or deletes anything, it shows the action and waits for approval. It never directly sees passwords. It can use more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack, Stripe, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Gusto, and Docusign, and it can pay with Stripe Link or Shopify Shop Pay after you approve the spend. Anthropic says this early version can still misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent, and personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker than work tasks.