Anthropic’s new standalone app, Duet, has been tested hands-on for around ten hours, mostly for running a business, creating content, building apps and putting together presentations. Here’s what stands out.
It’s A Separate App, Built Around Channels
Duet lives outside the main Claude app, on iOS and web. Instead of having different bot personalities like some rival tools, it uses channels, a bit like Slack, so you might have one for content and another for finances, all sharing the same memory underneath.
Editing Artefacts Is Genuinely Fast
Inside Duet, documents and slide decks can be commented on directly, a bit like editing a Google Doc, and changes appear almost instantly. Voice editing works particularly well: you can describe several changes to a slide deck out loud while walking, and Duet applies them all at once.
Every Task Spins Off Its Own Thread
This is also the app’s biggest source of confusion. You’ve got a main chat, channel chats, and then a separate thread for every task you create. It’s powerful, because you can run several things in parallel without losing track, but it takes a while to learn the structure.
A Dedicated Routine For Resurfacing Old Work
Setting up a channel just for artefacts, with a scheduled recap between 9am and 5pm, turns out to be genuinely useful. It nudges you back to documents you created and then forgot about, which is a common problem when you’re running several AI tasks at once.
Real-Time Voice Still Lags Behind
This is the clearest weak point. Duet’s voice mode doesn’t sound as natural as OpenAI’s Dot, there’s no way to mute yourself mid-conversation, and it isn’t as aware of where it is in a task when you ask. If voice matters most to you, Dot is still ahead here.
No Local Claude Code Sessions Yet
Duet can read a Claude Code session that’s already running on your computer and summarise it, but it can’t start a new one locally. For anyone whose workflow depends on local files, especially video editors, that’s the single biggest missing feature.
Fewer Approvals Would Help
Duet asks for your approval before sending messages, which feels like one extra step too many for low-stakes actions. Approval before payments, signatures or deletions makes more sense and is worth keeping.
The Best Reason To Use It Right Now
Access to Opus 5.5 inside a clean, standalone, proactive app is the main draw. The interface is simpler to explain than some competitors, even with the channel and thread structure taking a bit of getting used to.
What To Watch For Next
The two features most likely to make the biggest difference: real-time voice with better visibility into what Duet is actually doing, and the ability to spin up local Claude Code sessions directly from the app.
Whichever Claude tools you end up using, they work best on a properly structured foundation. Claude LaunchPad is the free starting point for getting that right.
