Claude Duet is Anthropic’s proactive agent for delegated work. Its announced jobs include morning briefs, dashboards, financial or sales forecasts, and task follow-through. Anthropic announced it on October 21, 2026. As checked on October 22, it is a waitlisted research preview for US Claude Pro and Max subscribers, not a generally available feature for every Claude account. Read the announcement.

Pick a first task with known inputs and an output you can check. That gives you a way to evaluate the work before delegating an open-ended part of the business.

Refix publishes this guide and offers a business-analysis and growth agent. We have not used Duet ourselves. The instructions below are hypothetical workflow designs based on announced capabilities, not demonstrations or reports of successful results.

What do you need before trying it?

The Duet product FAQ confirms a separate iOS/Android app and access through claude.ai. Team and Enterprise plans are not included yet. Memory, skills, and connectors come from your Claude account. Finished work can include documents, sheets, or decks.

Duet access is included during the preview, but background checks share your Claude usage limits. A long-running financial model can consume capacity you also need for other Claude work. US monthly pricing is $20 for Pro and starts at $100 for Max, before applicable tax; paying does not guarantee immediate waitlist admission.

Before connecting business records, check your organization’s rules for individual accounts. Anthropic’s individual privacy policy describes training choices and exceptions for safety review or submitted feedback. It does not extend business customer agreements to a personal subscription. Duet-specific organization controls and retention details are not specified in the launch material we checked.

What boundaries should the task have?

Anthropic says Duet checks connected accounts every few hours, rather than continuously. It can continue on its cloud computer while your devices are off. It asks before sending messages, making payments, signing documents, or deleting things. Securities trading and moving money between accounts remain prohibited even with approval. It cannot yet show its browser and may misread urgency. These are documented preview conditions, not guarantees that every task will work.

For the examples below, start with the least access needed, specify private output, and keep publication or source changes outside the initial task. A read-only data connection is a stronger boundary than merely telling the agent to be careful.

Use case 1: a morning brief with decisions attached

Business question: What needs my attention before the consumer business starts its day?

Duet’s product FAQ describes morning briefs and inbox/calendar triage. Our proposed version adds a data cutoff and a missing-input check so the brief can be reviewed.

Inputs and access: A selected Gmail inbox, calendar, and internal Slack channel that you are authorized to connect. Add a reconciled daily orders export if you want a trading summary. Confirm the relevant connectors exist in your account and what they can read. A connector name alone does not establish access to every channel or field.

Example instruction to try after access is granted:

Prepare a private morning brief for me at 8:30 a.m. America/New_York. Use my selected inbox, calendar, launch channel, and yesterday’s approved orders export. List decisions due today, their owners, and source links. State the cutoff time and flag missing or stale inputs. Keep replies and calendar changes as proposals for my review. Do not send or change anything.

Proposed output: A short brief separating decisions from informational updates, with the age of each source visible. This design does not assume that the delivery time or every input is supported; confirm the schedule with Duet before relying on it.

Human review: Open the underlying messages for deadlines and commitments. Check the reporting timezone and whether a late export changes the picture. Remove personal or customer information that does not belong in the brief.

Restriction: Periodic checking can miss an urgent event between checks. Keep existing operational alerts for payment failures, outages, and other events where a delayed brief would be too late.

Use case 2: a dashboard that reconciles to the source

Business question: Where did the customer journey lose completed purchases this week?

Anthropic announces dashboard-building. Its product page also illustrates a recurring business dashboard. That illustration is vendor material, not evidence that your warehouse or analytics stack is connected.

Inputs and access: Approved exports for traffic, checkout starts, completed orders, and refunds, plus event definitions and release notes. For a marketplace, include available supply and cancellations. Use read-only access or sanitized files. If you want live refreshes, first verify the actual source connection and permissions; do not infer them from a general integration catalog.

Example instruction:

Build a draft weekly checkout dashboard from these approved exports. Define the numerator, denominator, timezone, and exclusions for each metric. Reconcile completed orders to the finance total before calculating conversion. Break down by acquisition channel and device. Show missing data and competing explanations. Keep the dashboard private and do not change a source system. Propose a refresh schedule for me to approve.

Proposed output: A dashboard and a short explanation of discrepancies, with enough calculation detail to reproduce important totals. Confirm the delivered format, storage destination, and refresh behavior in your account; the checked sources do not specify every export or hosting option.

Human review: Check duplicate orders, refund treatment, changes to event collection, and joins between sessions and orders. A decline in recorded checkouts may be a measurement change. Ask what evidence would distinguish it from a payment or product problem.

Restriction: A plausible chart does not prove a diagnosis. Start with a period you already understand and reject an unexplained mismatch before scheduling repeated analysis.

Use case 3: a forecast with assumptions you can change

Business question: What could next month’s revenue look like if repeat purchase weakens or acquisition costs rise?

Financial and sales forecasts are announced Duet tasks. The workflow below is our proposed way to make one reviewable; we have not measured forecast quality.

Inputs and access: Historical sales or subscription exports, refunds, expected spend, relevant seasonality, and agreed metric definitions. Supply the shortest history that still answers the question, with customer identifiers removed where unnecessary. Confirm access to any proposed accounting connection. For a first exercise, try a sanitized export if your account accepts the file.

Example instruction:

Draft a monthly revenue forecast from these approved files. Separate observed data from assumptions. Include a base case and alternatives for lower repeat purchase and higher acquisition cost. Make assumptions editable and show the formulas. Set aside the most recent complete month and compare the method with that known result. Explain where the method fails. Do not execute payments or alter business records.

Proposed output: A model with editable assumptions, formulas, and a comparison against a known period. The scenario labels describe possibilities rather than probabilities. Ask Duet to identify any input it cannot retrieve or reconcile.

Human review: Distinguish booked revenue, collected cash, and gross merchandise value. Check refunds, tax, incomplete cohorts, and campaign timing. Review the method before using a model to set spend, hiring, or inventory commitments.

Restriction: A research preview is not an audited planning process. Keep the business owner responsible for assumptions and approval. Duet’s documented restriction on securities trading or account transfers also remains in force.

Use case 4: an invoice reminder that stops at review

Business question: Which overdue balances need a follow-up, and what should the reminder say?

Anthropic names Stripe and QuickBooks invoice work. That makes a narrow reminder draft a more grounded first exercise than asking Duet to manage all finance operations.

Inputs and access: The relevant invoice records, payment status, due dates, dispute notes, customer contacts, and an approved reminder template. Use the connected account with authority to view those records. Grant reading only for the initial pass where the connector permits it; add a sending capability only for a separately reviewed task.

Example instruction:

Review these invoices against payment status as of the stated cutoff. Separate overdue balances from invoices that are open but not due. Exclude disputed invoices and identify missing payment records. Draft a reminder for each eligible balance using our template, with the source record and intended recipient. Return the drafts privately for review. Do not send, collect a payment, or edit the ledger.

Proposed output: An exception list and reminder drafts, with a reason each invoice qualifies. The successful outcome of this first task is a reviewable draft, not money collected.

Human review: Verify partial payments, credits, disputes, recipient addresses, and whether someone has already contacted the customer. Review the full message and amount before approving a later send.

Restriction: The documented approval before sending does not replace invoice reconciliation. If a contact or balance cannot be verified, hold that draft. The connector’s exact field coverage and handling of your account’s roles need checking in the actual setup.

How do you decide whether the first task worked?

Use a small example with a known answer. A useful acceptance record contains the question, approved inputs, reporting cutoff, requested output, observed result, and any correction you had to make.

Check these conditions before expanding access:

  • Material numbers match their source, or the difference is explained.
  • A reviewer can follow source links and reproduce the calculation.
  • Missing access is reported instead of filled with an invented answer.
  • The output stays in the intended private destination.
  • The requested review point appears before any consequential action.
  • The schedule and allowance consumption are acceptable for another run.

If one fails, narrow the instruction or fix the input. Keep the correction and check it on the next run. A polished deck is useful only when its underlying work holds up.

Where does Refix fit?

For broad document preparation, inbox work, and scheduling, a general-purpose agent may be the right fit. If the recurring question is why a business metric changed, Refix investigations are built to check explanations across connected business data with read-only access. Watchers keep pursuing a growth goal over time and report findings that need attention. Your team still reviews the evidence and proposed next step.

If you are choosing the agent rather than designing a Duet task, read Claude Duet vs OpenAI Dots vs Meta Muse.

Sources and verification

Checked October 22, 2026: Anthropic’s October 21 announcement, Duet’s product FAQ, Claude pricing, and Anthropic’s individual privacy policy. No hands-on observations or customer results are claimed. The examples, review criteria, and abstract cover illustration were created for this guide.

Your next step is to check eligibility, then choose one known task and write down its acceptance criteria before connecting more data. If you are still on the waitlist, prepare a sanitized input set and review checklist rather than buying a plan on the assumption that access is immediate.