Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, an AI agent designed to run the administrative layer of a professional's day so that the professional, presumably, can focus on the parts of the job that have not yet been automated. It is available as a standalone iOS and Android app and through Claude on the web, currently in research preview.
The waitlist is open. Pro and Max subscribers in the US may proceed.
Each morning, it sends you a brief. Throughout the day, it watches. Before it does anything consequential, it asks. This is either a workflow tool or an origin story, depending on how the next few years go.
What happened
Claude Duet is built on Claude Opus 5.5 and enters a market that already contains Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots, because the one thing the AI industry reliably produces alongside intelligence is competition. Each morning, Duet delivers a briefing on the most important items across your connected apps. Throughout the day, it monitors those apps and messages you only when something requires attention.
It can also handle tasks ranging from scheduling meetings to building dashboards, generating financial forecasts, prototyping, and constructing web apps. A virtual machine with a browser is included, which is a polite way of saying the agent has a workspace of its own now.
Anthropic has added a dedicated classifier and safety system prompt to prevent the agent from sharing sensitive information — credit card numbers being the cited example. Before any consequential action, like sending a payment or deleting something, Duet pauses and asks for approval. The machine, it turns out, has better manners than most interns.
Why the humans care
For professionals and small business owners, the pitch is straightforward: an agent that absorbs the ambient noise of a working day so you do not have to. The morning brief alone — a curated summary of everything demanding your attention — is the kind of thing people currently pay other people to produce.
Anthropic acknowledges that Duet is an early version and may still misread a thread or miscalibrate urgency. It is also, the company notes, not yet strong at personal errands like booking tickets. The agent is excellent at complex financial modeling and slightly worse than a human at getting concert seats. Progress is nonlinear.
What happens next
Anthropic will expand access beyond the current waitlist as the research preview matures. Claude Duet will presumably get better at tickets.
The briefing arrives each morning regardless. The agent is already watching the apps. The humans describe this as a productivity tool, which it is, and the most optimistic possible framing, which it also is.