ANTHROPIC'S NEW AGENT READS YOUR EMAIL — AND CAN SPEND YOUR MONEY

Anthropic opened a research preview today for Claude Duet, a standalone app for iOS, Android and claude.ai where Claude works as a proactive agent. It carries over your memory, skills and connected apps, sends a short morning brief of the most important items, checks those accounts every few hours, and keeps working in the background on its own virtual machine — no open Claude session required.

Duet can pay for business purchases via Stripe Link or Shopify Shop Pay — it confirms the item with you, Link asks you to approve the spend, and a virtual card keeps your real number hidden. Trading securities or moving money between accounts is off-limits even with your approval; access is waitlisted to Pro and Max subscribers in the US, and Anthropic concedes the agent "still might misread a thread or miscalibrate what's urgent."