Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, a background agent aimed at professionals and small businesses. It can prepare daily briefings, build dashboards and suggest actions from a user’s connected data while continuing to work inside its own virtual machine.
Duet is built on Claude Opus 5.5 and connects to more than 6,000 services and plug-ins through the Claude Marketplace. It can monitor ongoing work and return proactively with recommendations or ask for approval when a task reaches a sensitive step. Anthropic distinguishes it from consumer assistants by emphasizing business workflows rather than errands and ticket booking.
The agent can make online purchases through Stripe Link or Shopify Shop Pay, but a user must approve the payment. Anthropic says it will not trade securities or move money between accounts. A new classifier checks messages for sensitive data, and the default behavior rejects requests for credit-card numbers and government identification.
Claude Duet is available on iOS, Android and the web in a research preview for Pro and Max subscribers, but access requires joining a waitlist. Users also cannot watch its browser activity live, which limits direct oversight while a background task is running.