Claude Duet can now shop for your business — with your OK

Anthropic's new Claude Duet doesn't wait for you to ask. It runs in its own remote virtual machine with a browser, so it keeps working after your laptop is shut. It sends a morning brief and checks your connected accounts every few hours. When something needs you, such as an unpaid invoice or a customer waiting on a reply, it messages you first. It's built on Opus 5.5 and can reach 6,000+ connectors, including QuickBooks, Stripe, HubSpot, DocuSign, Gusto and Shopify.

It can also spend money. Duet buys business supplies through Link, Stripe's digital wallet. It confirms the item with you, Link asks you to approve the spend, and a virtual card pays so your real card number stays private. It can also check out with Shopify's Shop Pay. Signing in to sites with logins saved in 1Password is "coming soon".

There are limits. Duet shows you the exact action and waits for approval before it sends a message, pays, signs or deletes anything. Trading securities and moving money between accounts are blocked even if you approve them. A classifier blocks sharing card numbers and government IDs. The research preview is waitlist-only for US Pro and Max subscribers, on iOS, Android and claude.ai, and it uses your existing plan limits.

Why it matters: once an agent can pay at checkout, it can act on its own, and the approval steps are what businesses will judge it on.