Anthropic Launches Claude Duet, a Work Agent for Small Teams

Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, an AI agent app built for professionals and small businesses that want to automate and manage everyday work. As TechCrunch reports, it is available in research preview on iOS, Android and the web through Claude.ai, and Pro and Max subscribers must join a waitlist to get in.

Duet is built on the Claude Opus 5.5 model. It can put together a daily briefing, create dashboards and suggest actions based on a user's data. It also works in the background on its own virtual machine, so people can keep doing other things, and it returns to the user when it needs approval. Anthropic says it proactively delivers recommendations while it monitors ongoing tasks.

Narrower than personal agents

Anthropic is drawing a line between Duet and personal agents such as Instinct. Duet is not good at errands or booking tickets, and it cannot show its browser activity live while it works. The focus is on work tasks instead.

The agent can connect to more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace. It can also make online purchases for users through Stripe's Link wallet or Shopify's Shop Pay. Payments and other sensitive steps require user approval, and Duet will not trade securities or move money between accounts.

Safeguards and competition

Anthropic also released a new classifier that checks each message to stop sensitive information from leaking. By default, the agent declines requests for credit card numbers and government identification.

The launch comes as the market moves from chat assistants to agents that act on a user's behalf. Rivals include Meta Muse, OpenAI Dots, Hark, Instinct, Grok Bot and Fo, and several of them, including Meta and OpenAI, are also pushing business versions with app integrations. Duet is Anthropic's entry in that race, with a clear focus on work rather than personal errands.