Anthropic opened the waitlist for Claude Duet on October 21, and by the next day it was the agent people were actually arguing about. The pitch is simple. It notices the overdue thing and starts on it before you ask.
What the preview includes
Duet is its own app for iPhone, Android, and the web at claude.ai. Anthropic built it for people with more open loops than they can track: a morning brief, a meeting to move, a dashboard, a draft follow-up. The model underneath is Claude Opus 5.5. During this preview it is included with Pro and Max in the United States. Team and Enterprise plans were not part of the announcement, and there is no Duet API yet.
The work continues in a remote environment, so closing the laptop does not stop it. That is the feature and the risk in the same sentence. Anthropic says Duet checks before it takes a consequential step, including payments and deletions. It also says the early version can misread a thread or misjudge what is urgent. Personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker than work tasks, and it cannot yet show you its browser.
The bill you do not see on a new line
There is no extra Duet price in the preview. The catch is the meter. Background checks count against the same usage limits as a normal Claude chat, and a bigger job, a forecast or a deck, burns more of them because it takes more turns.
If you join the waitlist, decide what you are willing to connect before the email arrives. An agent that can see the inbox is only useful if you trust its sense of urgency. Anthropic has already told you that sense is unfinished.