Anthropic Launches Claude Duet: Proactive AI Agent That Works Autonomously

Anthropic today released Claude Duet, a research-preview application that represents a new attempt at proactive agent behavior. Unlike traditional chat assistants that wait for user prompts, Claude Duet operates as an agent with four key design principles:

Proactively brings items needing attention to the user

Completes assigned tasks

Continues working while the user is away

Confirms with the user before taking actions on their behalf

The confirmation-before-action principle is described as the most critical design element: no matter how capable the agent, users need control over when it acts.

It Judges What Needs Your Attention

Claude Duet is built on Opus 5.5, which Anthropic says is the first model with sufficient judgment to decide what requires user intervention and what can wait. The agent inherits the user's existing Claude account memory, skills, and connected applications (Gmail, Calendar, Slack, etc.), making them immediately usable.

The experience is delivered via a standalone app on iOS, Android, and web. Each morning it provides a briefing listing items worth handling. In the background it runs tasks such as checking unpaid invoices, drafting emails, or building presentations. It only notifies the user when a task is complete or a decision is needed. Before sending messages, making payments, signing contracts, or deleting content, it shows the proposed action and waits for approval.

Anthropic engineering lead Mike Krieger shared his experience after several weeks: he had Duet draft interview questions, monitor Slack over a weekend so he could stay offline, and even discover and order a new book from a local bookstore on request. A commenter noted that an AI enabling a worry-free offline weekend is itself a compelling value proposition.

Official test cases from small-business owners illustrate practical use:

Real-estate agent Jess received a morning alert that a property showing had been scheduled on the wrong date — exactly the kind of issue she wanted caught without asking.

Restaurant owner Amin, managing 110 employees, uses Duet for accounting, customer service, and marketing, eliminating the need to keep dozens of browser tabs open.

Brand strategist Mya received a pre-meeting background brief and noticed the meeting conflicted with her flight; Duet proactively suggested rescheduling.

On safety, Anthropic states that Duet never directly sees passwords; logins and sensitive operations run in an isolated cloud environment. New classifiers intercept sensitive data such as credit-card numbers and government IDs. The agent cannot trade securities or transfer funds without explicit approval.

The ecosystem includes over 6,000 connectors and plugins. Shopify announced day-one integration, allowing store design via chat and performance tracking through Duet. Notably, Shop Pay is now available to merchants not on Shopify for the first time.

Currently, Claude Duet is limited to U.S. Pro and Max subscribers via a waitlist; team and enterprise plans are not yet offered. The research preview status means the system may misjudge urgency or miss events that occur between its periodic checks. Background operation consumes additional usage quota shared with the main Claude application.

The shift from reactive chat assistant to proactive agent may be more significant than model capability iterations alone. In Anthropic's roadmap, the next step is even more autonomous intelligent agents, with model capability serving as a prerequisite. The application page is at claude.com/product/claude-duet.