Anthropic is joining the crowded field of personal and productivity assistants with a new offering called Claude Duet, designed to take on competitors such as Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, Hark, Instinct, Grok Bot and Fo. The company says the agent targets professionals and small businesses, helping them automate and manage tasks. Unlike personal assistants like Instinct, Duet is not built for running errands or booking tickets, and it does not display its browsing activity in real time. Instead, it can assemble daily briefings, generate dashboards, and propose actions based on a user’s data.
Duet operates a virtual machine that can perform work in the background while the user attends to other matters, returning for approval when needed. Its launch reflects a broader market shift from simple AI assistants to agents that can act on a user’s behalf. Many rivals are also emphasizing business use cases. Meta’s Muse, while primarily a personal AI assistant, has a version aimed at small businesses that integrates with other apps. OpenAI’s Dots similarly leans toward professional workflows with its tool integrations.
Anthropic says Duet continuously monitors ongoing tasks and proactively offers recommendations. The agent runs on the Claude Opus 5.5 model and can access more than 6,000 connectors and plug‑ins available in the Claude Marketplace. It is capable of making online purchases for users through Stripe’s Link digital wallet or Shopify’s Shop Pay, though any payment step requires explicit user consent. Duet will not trade securities or move money between accounts.
The company also introduced a new classifier that scans each message to prevent the leakage of sensitive information. By default, the agent refuses requests that involve credit‑card numbers or government identification.
Claude Duet is released as an app for iOS and Android and is accessible on the web via Claude.ai for Pro and Max customers in a research preview. Interested users must join a waitlist to gain access.
Ivan Mehta covers global consumer‑tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based in India and has previously written for publications including the Huffington Post and The Next Web. He can be reached at the email address provided in the original article or via encrypted message on Signal at ivan.42.