How to Use Claude Duet
Setup
Five minutes: open the invite, review what carried over, check your apps.
First task
One clear job, scoped to named sources, with a stated finish line.
Approvals and tuning
Approve, edit or decline actions; teach the brief what matters.
Claude Duet needs almost no setup, which is exactly why it is worth slowing down for the first week. The agent inherits your Claude memory, skills and connected apps the moment you sign in, then starts watching them. If you know how to use Claude Duet deliberately, those first days turn into a brief you trust; if you do not, you get a noisy phone and a dent in your usage limits.
This tutorial shows how to use Claude Duet from the first sign-in: what to check before you connect anything new, how to write your first handoff, how approvals work, how to tune the morning brief, and a simple plan for days one to seven. It assumes you already have an invite; if not, start with the waitlist guide.
Updated October 22, 2026
Claude Duet setup in five minutes
There is no setup wizard. Anthropic's FAQ says you can message it by text or voice with no setup, and your history stays in one thread. What you should do is a quick audit of what the agent can already see.
- Open the invite. Sign in to the iPhone app, the Android app, or claude.ai in a browser with the Claude account that received the invite. Allow notifications on your phone; a proactive agent that cannot reach you is just a chat app.
- Review carried-over memory. Duet reads the memory on your Claude account. Open Claude's memory settings and delete anything outdated, such as an old employer or a finished project. The agent will otherwise treat it as current.
- Check connected apps. List the apps already connected to Claude and remove any you do not want watched. Each one is something Duet reads at every check-in. Our Claude Duet connectors page explains what each integration lets it do.
Hand Claude Duet its first task
The fastest way to learn how to use Claude Duet is to give it one real job and watch how it handles it. Pick something recurring and low risk.
Write the ask
A good first task names the sources, the output and the boundaries. Compare:
"Keep an eye on my email."
"Every weekday, read new emails from clients in my Gmail label "Accounts". Tell me which ones need a reply today and draft replies for the simple ones. Do not send anything and do not touch other labels."
The second version tells Duet where to look, what "done" means and what is off limits. More examples are in our Claude Duet prompts library.
Let it work
Duet works on its own cloud computer, so you can put the phone away. For bigger jobs it messages you when it has finished rather than streaming progress. In the preview you cannot watch its browser live.
Review the result
When the result arrives, open the references it cites and check the claims against the original messages. If it says something is "all clear" but a source failed to load, treat that item as unknown, not done.
Approve or reject Claude Duet actions
Approvals are the core safety habit with Duet. Anthropic says the agent asks before sensitive operations, and the launch video shows what that looks like: a drafted email with "Not now" and "Send" buttons.
What triggers approval
Four kinds of action always wait for you: sending a message, making a payment, signing a document and deleting a file. Research, reading, drafting and building reports happen without asking.
Editing before approving
You do not have to accept a draft as is. Reply in the thread with changes ("make it shorter, mention the Friday deadline") and Duet revises before asking again. Declining is fine too; tap "Not now" and the action does not happen.
For how logins, passwords and the sensitive-information classifier work behind those buttons, see the Claude Duet safety guide.
Tune your Claude Duet morning brief
The morning brief is the first thing Duet sends you each day: a short ranked list of what needs attention across your connected apps, with drafts already prepared. Expect the first few to be imperfect.
Tell it what matters
Duet learns from plain-language feedback in the thread. Name the people, clients or projects that always matter, and say when it ranked something too high or too low.
"Anything from Dana at Northfield is always top priority. Newsletters and receipts should never appear in the brief."
Mute noisy sources
If one connected app keeps producing low-value items, either tell Duet to ignore it for the brief or disconnect it. The morning brief guide has more tuning patterns.
Mistakes new users make in week one
Most early frustration comes from a handful of habits that work fine in a chat window but backfire with a proactive agent.
- Connecting everything at once. Ten apps on day one means ten sources of noise in the brief, and you cannot tell which connection is causing bad rankings. Add one or two, then expand.
- Treating silence as "all clear". The agent checks in every few hours, not continuously. A quiet afternoon can simply mean the next check has not happened yet.
- Approving from the notification alone. A notification shows a summary. Open the draft and its sources before you tap Send or Pay, especially for anything involving money or people outside your company.
- Giving feedback once and forgetting it. Corrections work best when they are specific and repeated in the same words until the behavior sticks.
- Forgetting what it is still following. Every open follow-up costs usage at every check-in. Ask for the list on Fridays and close what is finished.
None of these are bugs. They are the cost of handing judgment to software that is still in research preview, and they fade quickly once you know to look for them.
A first-week plan for Claude Duet
Treat week one as training for both of you. This plan is how to use Claude Duet without over-trusting it too early.
| Days | Focus | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Observe | Read every brief and alert; correct rankings in the thread; approve nothing important without checking sources. |
| 3–5 | Delegate | Hand off one recurring task per day, for example drafting replies, finding unpaid invoices or preparing a weekly summary. |
| 6–7 | Review | Ask Duet to list everything it is following and every setting it created. Stop what you do not need. |
Day 1–2 observe
Do not hand off much yet. Watch which items it flags and which it misses. Anthropic warns that it can misjudge urgency and miss things that arrive between check-ins, so this is when you learn its blind spots.
Day 3–5 delegate
Add one task at a time so you can tell which handoff caused which result. Ideas by category are on the use cases page.
Day 6–7 review
Ask the agent to show what it is following and stop anything finished. That keeps the brief short and saves usage, which matters because background checks count toward your plan's limits.
Frequently asked questions
How do I start using Claude Duet?
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Sign in with your invited Claude account on the Duet app or claude.ai, review the memory and connected apps that carried over, then send one scoped task.
How do I talk to Claude Duet by voice?
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Claude Duet accepts voice as well as text messages. Use the voice option in the phone app's message bar.
How do I stop Claude Duet following a project?
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Tell it in the thread, for example "stop following the Northfield renewal", then ask it to show any tasks or settings it created and confirm they are gone.
How do I change what Claude Duet watches?
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Add or remove connected apps in your Claude account, and tell Duet in plain language which sources, labels or channels to ignore.
How do I review what Claude Duet did?
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Anthropic says you can see what Claude Duet has done or is doing and steer it. Ask in the thread for a summary of recent actions, and open the sources it cites.
How do I connect Gmail to Claude Duet?
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Connect Gmail to your Claude account; Claude Duet picks up connected apps automatically. See the connectors guide.
Can I use Claude Duet without connecting apps?
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Yes, but it becomes far less proactive. Without connected apps Claude Duet has nothing to watch, so it mostly works on tasks you hand it directly.
How often does Claude Duet check my apps?
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Every few hours. There is no guaranteed alert time, so do not rely on it for minute-by-minute monitoring.
How do I correct Claude Duet when it is wrong?
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Reply in the thread with the correction. For changed facts, ask it to do a fresh read rather than relying on what it saw earlier.
How do I turn off Claude Duet notifications?
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Use your phone's notification settings for the Duet app. Without notifications, though, you lose most of what makes Claude Duet proactive.