THE SHORT VERSION
● Costs nothing extra — included in Pro and Max, shares the same usage limits
● Runs Opus 5.5 — on its own cloud VM with a browser, so your laptop can be shut
● US only, waitlist — standalone iOS and Android apps plus claude.ai
● Hard-blocked — trading securities and moving money between accounts, even with approval
Claude Duet is a separate application rather than a toggle inside the Claude app, and the direction of travel is what makes it different: it contacts you. A morning brief arrives with whatever it judges needs attention across your connected apps, and after that it messages you only when something changes. It runs on its own virtual machine with a browser attached, checks connected accounts roughly every few hours, and keeps working on tasks after you walk away. It is included in Pro and Max at no extra charge, sharing the same usage limits as the rest of Claude — which means background checks and large tasks quietly draw down the allowance you use for ordinary conversations.
The permission model is the most informative part of the launch. Duet reads and drafts on its own authority but stops and asks before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything. Two actions are off the table entirely: trading securities and moving money between accounts are blocked even if you approve them. That is a product decision rather than a technical limit, and it draws the line at the ledger instead of at the confirmation dialog. A dedicated classifier blocks credit card numbers and government ID from leaving at all, and health and personal finance data move only on explicit instruction. It connects to over 6,000 connectors from the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto, LinkedIn, Docusign, HubSpot, Canva and Shopify, with purchases routed through Stripe Link on a virtual card.
Anthropic publishes the weaknesses rather than leaving them to be discovered, which is unusual enough to repeat: Duet can misread a conversation thread, can misjudge what is urgent, is weaker at personal errands like booking tickets than at work tasks, and cannot yet show you its browser. If you already pay for Pro or Max, joining the waitlist costs nothing and the monitoring case is the clearest value. If you were considering upgrading tier for Duet, wait — a research preview that admits it misjudges urgency is not a reason to change plan.
Sources
Claude Duet product page · Introducing Claude Duet · TestingCatalog