Anthropic is moving the AI competition from "whose model is smarter" toward "who can really get things done for you." On Wednesday local time, the company unveiled a new app called Claude Duet, positioning it as an AI agent that can stand by in the background at all times, proactively sniff out your needs, and directly get to work, further broadening the Claude product lineup.
Unlike those obedient conversational assistants that wait for your instructions, Claude Duet's temperament is "proactive." It gathers together important information from the various apps connected to you, and once it spots something that needs your attention, it proactively pops up a reminder; from scheduling meetings and making financial forecasts to developing web apps, this whole string of tasks that would normally require someone watching step by step—can all be handed over to it to run.
However, this "around-the-clock employee" has not yet officially started work. Claude Duet is currently still in a research preview phase, available only through a waitlist to Claude Pro and Max subscribers in the United States. With Meta and OpenAI also each advancing their own proactive AI agents, Anthropic's move is essentially an attempt to turn model capability into a service that users can actually put to use.