AI & Models
Claude Duet app is Anthropic's bet on agents
Anthropic launched Claude Duet, a new agent app for professionals and small businesses built on Claude Opus 5.5, entering a crowded field that includes Meta Muse, OpenAI Dots, Hark, Instinct, Grok Bot, and Fo.
The personal- and productivity-assistant space is already flooded with new entrants launching weekly, and Anthropic is now competing in it directly. The company says Duet is built to help professionals and small businesses automate and manage tasks, distinguishing it from personal agents like Instinct: Duet isn’t meant to run errands or book tickets, and it can’t surface its browser activity as it happens.
Instead, Duet builds daily briefings, creates dashboards, and suggests actions based on a user’s data. Like other agents, it can work in the background through its own virtual machine while the user does something else, returning to ask for approval when needed.
The launch reflects a broader shift from AI assistants toward agents that act on a user’s behalf, with many of Anthropic’s rivals leaning into business use cases — Meta’s Muse, primarily a personal assistant, also has a small-business version with app connections, and OpenAI’s Dots carries a business slant through integrations with professional tools. Anthropic says Duet proactively surfaces recommendations as it tracks ongoing tasks, connects to more than 6,000 connectors and plugins in the Claude Marketplace, and can complete purchases on a user’s behalf via Stripe’s Link digital wallet or Shopify’s Shop Pay — with sensitive steps like payments requiring user approval. Duet will not trade securities or move money between accounts.
Anthropic also introduced a new classifier that screens every message to stop sensitive information from leaking out; by default, the agent declines requests for credit card numbers or government ID. Claude Duet is available now on iOS, Android, and the web via Claude.ai, in research preview for Pro and Max subscribers who join a waitlist.
Why it matters
Anthropic is staking its agent strategy on business users rather than consumer errands, betting that proactive task management — not browsing or shopping on someone’s behalf — is where it can differentiate from Meta, OpenAI, and the rest of the crowded agent field.