What Is Claude Duet? How It Works and How to Get Access

Claude Duet is Anthropic's new proactive AI agent: an app that checks your connected work tools, sends you a morning brief, handles tasks in the background and asks before it acts. Right now it is a research preview, open by waitlist only to Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US.

Anthropic announced it on October 21, 2026. Everything below is based on Anthropic's Claude Duet announcement and its product page, not on hands-on testing, because access is limited to invited US users. If you are still choosing an assistant for daily work, our guide to the best AI assistant compares the main options.

Who can get Claude Duet right now?

This is the part most news coverage buries. Claude Duet is not a general release. Anthropic calls it a research preview, meaning an early version it is still tuning based on feedback, and the only way in is to join a waitlist and wait for an email invitation.

Here is how eligibility breaks down as of October 22, 2026:

Pro is Claude's standard paid plan, and Max is the higher-usage tier above it. There is no separate Duet fee during the preview. Plan prices change from time to time, so check Claude's official pricing page for current rates. If you are weighing subscriptions, our breakdown of the main $20 AI plans shows what each one includes.

The catch: it shares your usage limits

Duet draws from the same usage allowance as the rest of your Claude account. Its background check-ins count against that allowance, and bigger jobs, such as building a financial model or a slide deck, take more work. If you already lean hard on Claude for writing or coding, Duet will dip into the same pool.

How to get Claude Duet: joining the waitlist

1. Check your plan. You need Claude Pro or Max on a US account.
2. Open the official page. Go to the Claude Duet waitlist page on claude.com and select Join the waitlist.
3. Watch your inbox. Anthropic says it will email you when Duet is ready for your account.
4. Open Duet once invited. Use the standalone Claude Duet app on iOS or Android, or open it on the web at claude.ai.

Anthropic has not published wait times or how it decides who goes first. Be wary of anyone offering paid invites or early access links: the official waitlist is the only route Anthropic describes.

Not eligible yet? You can still prepare. Duet carries over your memory, skills and connected apps from your main Claude account, so setting those up now (see our walkthrough on using Claude AI for work) means less setup later.

What does Claude Duet actually do?

The core idea is simple: the regular Claude app waits for you to open a chat, while Duet comes to you. Anthropic built it around its Claude Opus 5.5 model and aims it at professionals and small business owners who juggle more than they can keep track of.

A daily morning brief

Each morning, Duet sends a short summary of the most important items across your connected apps. During the day it checks those apps every few hours and messages you only when something needs attention. You can tell it what you want to hear about and how often.

Tasks that keep running after you leave

You hand Duet work by typing or speaking in one ongoing thread. It runs on its own virtual machine in the cloud, with its own browser, so a task continues after you lock your phone or shut your laptop. You get a notification when it finishes or needs your review.

Your approval before anything important

Duet reads, drafts and prepares work on its own. Before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows you exactly what it plans to do and waits for your OK.

How could you use Claude Duet at work?

Anthropic says Duet works with more than 6,000 connectors and plugins from its Claude Marketplace. The examples it gives map neatly onto everyday work:

• Inbox catch-up: find the Gmail and Slack messages you missed and draft replies.
• Getting paid: check QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and draft reminders.
• Payroll prep: prepare a Gusto payroll run with hours, bonuses and reimbursements filled in for your review.
• Hiring: draft a job posting and publish it to LinkedIn once you edit and approve it.
• Contracts: prepare agreements and send them for signature through Docusign.
• Sales follow-up: draft emails using the contact and deal history in HubSpot.
• Bigger builds: dashboards, financial or sales forecasts, prototypes and simple web apps.

Anthropic also shared stories from early testers. One real estate broker's morning brief flagged a property showing booked on the wrong day, and a brand strategist had Duet prepare a brief for a client call, then point out that the call sat right before her flight.

Sample requests you could send

Because you message Duet like a colleague, plain instructions work. Here are a few written in that style:

• "Every morning, flag client emails that have waited more than two days for a reply and draft responses for me to check."
• "Find invoices in QuickBooks that are more than 30 days overdue and draft a polite reminder for each. Don't send anything yet."
• "Before my Thursday call with the new client, pull our last three email threads and write me a one-page brief."
• "Build a simple dashboard of weekly sales from Stripe and refresh it every Monday."

Notice the pattern: say what you want, what to leave alone and when to stop and ask. It is the same habit behind good prompts in any assistant, and our Claude prompts for summarizing meetings follow it closely.

What Claude Duet will not do (yet)

Anthropic is unusually direct about the limits, and they matter if you are deciding whether it is worth the wait:

• It will not trade securities or move money between accounts, even with your approval.
• It can misread an email thread or misjudge what is urgent, and it can miss something that arrives between check-ins.
• It is built around work, so personal errands like booking tickets are weaker.
• You cannot yet watch its browser while it works.
• It lives in its own app for now, separate from the main Claude app.

How it handles sensitive information

Anthropic says Duet never directly sees your passwords or sign-in tokens. A dedicated classifier checks each message and is designed to block sharing of the most sensitive details, such as credit card numbers and government ID. Health or personal finance details go out only when you explicitly tell Duet to send them.

For business purchases, Duet can pay through Link, Stripe's digital wallet, using a virtual card after you approve the spend. You can also disconnect any app Duet has access to at any time.

Claude Duet vs the Claude app: what is the difference?

Both run on the same Claude account, so your memory, skills and connected apps carry over. The difference is who starts the conversation and where the work happens.

In practice, the Claude app is still the better place for focused, hands-on work like drafting a document together. Duet is built for the stream of small and large jobs that pile up around that work. For a wider view of this category, see our roundup of AI productivity assistants by job.

Common misconceptions about Claude Duet

• "It costs extra." Not during the preview. It is included in Pro and Max, though it uses the same limits.
• "It watches everything in real time." It checks your connected accounts every few hours, partly so it does not burn through your usage.
• "It acts on its own." It drafts and prepares freely, but sending, paying, signing and deleting all need your approval.
• "Downloading the app is enough." You still need an invitation from the waitlist and an eligible US plan.
• "It is just Claude with notifications." Duet runs tasks on its own cloud machine and browser, so work continues when your devices are off.