How to use Claude Duet when it rolls out to you

For now, you'll need to first join a waitlist.

On October 21, following SpaceXSI, Meta and OpenAI, Anthropic became the latest AI lab to release a personal agent. Like its competitors, the company is billing Claude Duet as an always-on AI agent that can proactively complete tasks for you, even when you're away from your phone or computer. Duet runs on its own virtual machine, with access to a dedicated browser it can use to surf the web and complete jobs. It can also use any apps you've connected to your Claude account. If you're curious about Claude Duet, here's what you need to know about availability and how much it will cost you to run the agent.

How to join the Claude Duet waiting list

As of the writing of this article, Duet is currently in preview, with availability limited to Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the US. What's more, you'll need to join a waitlist before you can start using the agent. You can find that waitlist on Anthropic's website. The company asks you to enter your name, company and email address. You'll also need to indicate the type of phone you use, be it an Android or iPhone, and write a short description of the type of work you intend to hand off to Claude. Anthropic asks you to share what device you use because it offers a standalone Claude Duet app on Android and iOS.

What Anthropic plans include Claude Duet?

While things may change, Anthropic says it will include Duet as a perk of its $20 per month Pro plan and up. Notably, that differs from OpenAI's Dot agents, which you can currently only get by paying for one of the company's own Pro plans. That tier starts at $100, with OpenAI recently adding a $500 per month option. Anthropic isn't making Claude Duet available to Team and Enterprise customers just yet.

During the preview, Anthropic says Duet will share usage with all your other Claude apps, including Code and Cowork. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, so I can't speak to whether Duet is actually useable with a Pro plan, but Anthropic has said it designed the agent to check your connected accounts every few hours, "because checking nonstop would use up your plan's limits much faster." Part of the reason the company is previewing Duet before rolling it out more widely is so that it can collect feedback on how often it messages users.

What can you do with Claude Duet?

As I mentioned, Anthropic is advertising Duet as a proactive personal agent. Each day, it can generate a short briefing with a list of action items based on the apps you've connected to your Claude account. You can also delegate a variety of tasks to Claude Duet. For instance, you can ask it to schedule meetings for you, create forecasts, build web apps and more. For example, a business owner might task Duet with generating a weekly sales and cashflow dashboard, while a scientist could ask their agent to flag research papers related to their area of study as they're published.

"The Claude app waits for you to open a chat, and you work on something alongside Claude. Claude Duet comes to you," Anthropic says. "It tells you what needs your attention each morning, takes tasks you hand it by message, and reaches out when one is done or needs your approval."

Duet's proactivity is built on the data in your Claude account, including information the chatbot has written to its memory and any apps you've connected to your Anthropic account. For that reason, how useful you might find Duet will depend a lot on how much of your digital life you're willing to share with Anthropic. For some, the privacy tradeoff is not going to be worth it.