Claude Duet: Anthropic's agent that works with the app closed

On October 21, 2026, Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet, which the company itself describes as "a new app where Claude works as a proactive agent." In plain terms: an AI that doesn't wait for you to type. It gathers what matters early in the day, watches your apps throughout the day and only pings you when something needs your attention. The stated audience is "professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track."

That describes the owner of a mid-sized company I know well: the week disappears between email, spreadsheets, calendar and chasing proposals. Duet is an attempt to take that tracking off the team's shoulders.

What Duet does in practice

According to Anthropic, it delivers a morning summary of the most important items across your connected apps. Then it monitors those apps and alerts you only when something calls for a decision. And it carries out tasks: scheduling meetings, building dashboards, producing financial or sales forecasts, creating prototypes and web apps.

Large deliverables come back as editable files: a research brief, a financial model, a deck, a dashboard. That matters because the material lands in the tools your team already uses, instead of being stuck inside a chat.

The connectors listed in the Help Center are Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Docusign and Calendly. There are also channels for organizing areas of work, such as finance and hiring, and support for plugins, including a "small business plugin." Input can be by text or voice.

Where it runs

Duet runs on its own computer in the cloud and keeps working with the app closed. According to Engadget, it is a virtual machine with a dedicated browser. For those operating it, this means the task doesn't depend on your phone being on or your laptop being open. There is a standalone app on iOS and Android, as well as access through claude.ai.

Who can use it today

This is the point that changes the conversation for Brazilian readers. As of November 2, 2026, Duet is not open to the general public. The requirements, according to the Help Center as of October 30:

• a Pro, Max or Ultra plan;
• a Claude account in the United States;
• an invitation from the waitlist.

There is a discrepancy between sources on the plans: claude.com and the Help Center cite Pro, Max and Ultra, while the release notes and Engadget mention only Pro and Max. Team and Enterprise plans are left out for now. Anthropic says it plans to bring Duet to them later, with no date. Dates for expansion to other countries have not been published either.

The waitlist asks for your name, company, email, phone type and a brief description of the work you want to delegate. Opening the app without an invitation does not put anyone in the queue, and access comes in waves, with features that may change during the preview.

Cost and limits

During the research preview, Duet is included in the Pro, Max and Ultra plans "at no extra cost." Engadget cites Pro at US$20 per month and notes that "things may change." The price of Duet on its own or after the preview has not been published, nor have the prices of Max and Ultra in the material reviewed.

The point of attention is usage limits. Duet draws on those of your plan, with a five-hour session and weekly limits, at the same pace as chats. Background work, such as the morning summary and check-ins, also counts, so the ceiling may arrive sooner. Large tasks, such as a financial model or a deck, require more model turns. Usage is shared with Code and Cowork, according to Engadget. The exact limit figures are not public.

Those who are admitted receive a full reset of their limits, available until November 30, 2026.

Security: what the company claims

Duet was designed to ask for approval before sending a message, paying, signing a document or deleting anything. A new classifier checks drafted messages before they are sent, and Anthropic says it never sees passwords, browser cookies or login tokens. The company says it uses Duet internally every day. All of this is self-reported: no independent security audit appears in the material.

In my analysis, the human approval rule is the right design for a mid-sized company. An agent that pays and signs without anyone looking is a risk, not a gain.

Caveats that weigh on the decision

• You can't choose the model. Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5 and decides the effort level on its own.
• Anthropic itself admits: "We built Claude Duet for work, so it's weaker at personal errands."
• No benchmarks, performance metrics or data on hours saved have been published.
• There is competition: Engadget says Anthropic was the "latest AI lab" to launch a personal agent, after "SpaceXSI, Meta and OpenAI." Rival products, prices and figures are not in the material.

What to do now, even without access

Duet is not yet a concrete option for most Brazilian companies. The lesson, however, is valuable today, and you can act on it with the tools you already have.

Pick a repetitive, tedious workflow: following up on stalled proposals, or the weekly report someone assembles every Friday by copying data from three places. Write down how many hours per week it consumes and who does it. That number will decide the case for any agent, Duet or otherwise. Without that baseline, no one can say whether something saved time.

Also define which steps require a person's approval: sending to the client, paying, signing. And start with a single pain point, validating before you expand. If you'd like, at FM Solutions we do this mapping with your operation, looking at the case before talking about cost. When Duet reaches business plans and more countries, you'll already know what to delegate first.