Anthropic wants Claude to come to you instead of waiting for a prompt. The company opened a waitlist on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026 for a research preview of Claude Duet, a standalone app for iOS, Android and claude.ai in which Claude works as a proactive agent. It is starting with U.S. subscribers on the Pro and Max plans, shares those plans' usage limits, and runs on Claude Opus 5.5, according to Anthropic's announcement and help center.
What it does
- Morning brief: each morning it looks across your email and calendar, picks what most needs your attention and can draft replies for review.
- Background work: it has its own virtual machine with a browser in the cloud, so it keeps working when your phone or laptop is off and notifies you when a task is done.
- Uses your Claude setup: it carries over memory, skills and connected apps from your Claude account.
- Business chores: Anthropic lists finding unpaid invoices and drafting reminders, preparing payroll for review, and building briefs, decks, financial models and dashboards.
The guardrails
Before Claude Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows exactly what it is about to do and waits for approval, Anthropic said. Some actions are off-limits even with approval, including trading securities and moving money between accounts. It checks connected accounts "every few hours" rather than constantly, because nonstop checks would burn through plan limits, so urgent items can arrive between checks. It doesn't make phone calls or text other people, you can't watch or take over its browser yet, and Microsoft 365 isn't supported. Anthropic warned it "might misread a thread or miscalibrate what's urgent."
The competition
CNBC said Duet is likely to challenge OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse agents. Team and Enterprise plans aren't included yet. The launch comes as Anthropic prepares its planned November stock market listing, and a day after xAI added reports, memos and live dashboards to Grok Bot.