Anthropic previews Claude Duet, an always-on assistant, for US Pro and Max users

Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, a proactive assistant you hand work to by message. It works on its own cloud computer, uses your Claude memory, skills and connectors, sends a morning brief, flags what needs you in your inbox and calendar, and takes on tasks like drafting reminders for unpaid invoices, preparing payroll for review or building a deck. It asks before sensitive steps such as sending messages or paying. Duet runs on Opus 5.5 and is a research preview on a waitlist for Pro and Max subscribers in the US only; its background checks count toward your plan's usage limits, and Anthropic warns it may misjudge what is urgent. On Hacker News (299 points, 254 comments, 46 top-level commenters when we checked), there was no consensus. One camp doubted trust and privacy, asking whether giving an agent your inbox or a password manager is wise, and some said a model cannot know what they would approve. A second camp saw a me-too product arriving weeks after similar agents from OpenAI and Meta, and some said it should live inside the Claude app or not tie you to one model family. A third camp, people already running personal agents of their own or from rivals, said morning check-ins and inbox monitoring are genuinely useful. Only one commenter said they had Duet access, and they only described asking it about its setup. One objected that it shares the plan's usage limits. Sorted take: a good idea, but US-only for now, and the real test is judgement: an agent that pings you about the wrong things is just more noise. You can copy the pattern today with a daily brief built from your own tools.