How-to·October 31, 2026, 19:30

Claude Duet will handle your email and tasks while you're away

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Anthropic has unveiled Claude Duet as a research preview. It can work on its own with email, calendar and larger tasks, but for now it is open only to invited users in the US.

Anthropic has unveiled Claude Duet, an AI assistant designed to take care of tasks for the user. It was shown around October 21-22, 2026, as a research preview, meaning an early version being tested by selected users.

How it works

Users write or speak to Duet the way they would to a person. Duet decides on its own which connected apps to use. According to Itdaily, there are more than 6,000 so-called connectors, which are links to other services such as Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks and Stripe.

Duet sends daily overviews of email and calendar. It can also take on larger tasks such as research reports and financial models. Users can follow the work in a tasks tab.

According to Itdaily, Duet runs on its own virtual machine and browser, so the user's device doesn't need to be turned on. It is available in the iOS and Android app and on claude.ai.

Asks permission first

Duet must get approval before it sends messages, makes payments, signs documents or deletes anything. It shows what it intends to do. If the user can't approve right away, Duet can complete the remaining steps.

There are also limits. Duet can't access all projects or files on the user's computer, and it can't make calls or send text messages. Securities trading and transfers between accounts are prohibited. According to Itdaily, a classifier, a kind of automatic filter, makes Duet decline requests for credit card numbers or government ID documents.

Who can get access

For now, Duet is available only in the US, and access requires an invitation from a waitlist. Anthropic's support page lists Pro, Max and Ultra subscribers as covered, while Team and Enterprise plans are not yet supported. Itdaily mentions only Pro and Max.

Duet costs nothing extra during the research preview, but it draws on the subscription's session and weekly usage limits, in the same way as regular chat. According to the support page, it runs on Claude Opus 5.5, and users can't choose a model. Itdaily writes that the model is the same as in the main product.

The sources don't say when Duet will become more widely available or available outside the US.

Late to the game, says Itdaily

Itdaily assesses that Anthropic is late to the field. Competitors named in the article are Google Gemini Spark, Meta Muse, Microsoft Autopilot and OpenAI Dots.