Anthropic launches Claude Duet for proactive work management

Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, a new personal agent that distinguishes itself from competitors like Muse and GrokBot by focusing on work-oriented proactivity rather than character or personality. The platform immediately prompts users to connect Slack, Gmail, and Drive, using inbox content to suggest proactive projects. In testing, Duet identified a potential conflict in podcast sponsor inventory by detecting two emails offering the same date to different sponsors, although it repeatedly flagged this as an issue even after the user clarified it was not a problem. The agent successfully drafted email responses, achieving approximately 90% completion on creative proposals without user intervention. The interface includes a web version with separate channels and utilizes Claude's artifact infrastructure for interactive outputs, automatically organizing tasks into active, up next, scheduled, or resolved categories. Users noted that Duet is better suited for proactive tasks than for UI or brand visual design, where Claude's native design experience remains superior. The release follows the earlier launch of OpenAI's Dots, which users found less proactive and more suitable for context management than strategic engagement. The tool is viewed as an easy-to-set-up version of a personal assistant that handles low-priority tasks, though it is not yet a replacement for the main AI interaction workflow.