Claude Duet Joins the Always-On Agent Race—With Big Ambitions and Early Limits
Claude Duet Joins the Always-On Agent Race—With Big Ambitions and Early Limits
Anthropic has entered the crowded market for always-on AI assistants with Claude Duet, a research-preview app built on its Opus 5.5 model and aimed at professionals and small-business owners.
The pitch is straightforward: instead of waiting for a prompt, Duet monitors connected services, delivers a morning briefing and flags issues that need attention. Anthropic says users can delegate work ranging from meeting scheduling to building dashboards, forecasts and web apps; before consequential actions such as payments or deletions, the agent is meant to request approval.
Addy Osmani described Duet as a proactive app operating across “6,000 connectors/plugins,” saying it keeps working when users step away and tells them what needs attention. The company’s framing puts it squarely against Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots, both part of a wider rush to make AI agents persistent rather than purely conversational.
But the launch comes with important caveats. Anthropic itself calls Duet an early version that may “misread a thread or miscalibrate what’s urgent,” and says it is less capable on personal errands such as booking tickets. Access is also limited for now: US Pro and Max subscribers can join a waitlist for the preview.
An early hands-on review found reason for optimism. After a disappointing experience with OpenAI’s Dot—which reportedly failed to finish a tax task or alert the user—the reviewer said Duet had shifted their usage of ChatGPT and Claude closer to an even split. They called it the first personal agent they would consider “a pro tool,” praising its dedicated work channels and ability to keep documents, slides, designs and dashboards current.
Still, the same review exposed the gap between promise and product: Duet cannot yet control Claude sessions on the user’s computers, its email drafts lag Dot’s, scheduled runs cannot access custom connectors, and it lacks a full voice mode. Duet’s real test is whether those rough edges can be fixed before rivals turn their own always-on agents into daily habits.
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