Anthropic opens Claude Duet research preview, a proactive agent app built on Opus 5.5
Anthropic opened a waitlist on October 21, 2026 for a research preview of Claude Duet, a standalone app where Claude works as a proactive agent: it surfaces what needs attention, completes requested tasks, keeps working when the user steps away, and checks in before acting on the user's behalf.
Duet is designed around Claude Opus 5.5 and targets professionals and small business owners. Each morning it sends a short brief on the most important items across connected apps, then monitors those apps through the day and messages only when something needs attention.
Tasks range from scheduling meetings to building dashboards with dozens of tools, financial or sales forecasts, prototypes and web apps. Anthropic emphasizes discretion: Duet is built to decide what needs the user, what can wait, and when to check first.
The preview is available on iOS, Android and claude.ai, starting with US Pro and Max subscribers, included in those plans at the same usage limits as the rest of Claude.
For buyers, Duet is Anthropic's most direct move into the proactive-agent category, putting it in visible competition with other personal-agent efforts; the waitlist and US-only start mean teams should treat availability as limited for now.
The governance question to probe in any pilot is the same one the product raises by design: which actions require check-ins, how connected-app permissions are scoped, and what audit trail exists for actions the agent took unattended.