I’m excited to try this. I got Instinct after hearing all the hype and it is basically completely useless. Fails at the most basic browser navigation type tasks.
Right now the consumer agent players are trying to pretend they have decent functionality that will exist 3-6 months so they can get marketshare. So hopefully Anthropic is sticking to their underpromise and over deliver.
I don't trust Facebook or Zuckerberg, but I also don't really care about my own personal privacy from large corporations. I will use whatever is best/cheapest, generally. And I say this as someone who hates advertising and adtech.
I have to agree. I've been using it for a few days now after coming from GrokBot, then Muse, then Dots. None really clicked for me within the first day. Duet seems different. I haven't quite pegged it, but off the top of my hand:
1. Yes, channels really are useful
2. It does seem to be using Opus 5.5 behind the scenes because, shockingly, it's not screwing everything up like the others usually did
3. Agree that the answers are short and to the point. If you want more info, you just pop open whatever task (separate from channels) it started and you can see what it's doing.
Seems like more time in the oven might have paid off here.
Also, to be clear, this is purely used as a personal assistant by me. I still use omp+Paseo for all of my day to day work. I find the separation of concerns kind of nice.
I started using Grok Bot a few days ago and I have seen zero screwups.
I don't know what I'd need a channel for, creating bots/personas seems more natural.
Adding credentials is essential, contrary to what the author of the article said. I gave it my library login and it can fetch newspapers for me instead of me clicking through the app every day.
When I had to provide a GitLab token, it nicely spawned a box for me to save the credential.
- What did not work well -
Voice calls. The quick responses are often dumb while the proper model does the thinking, and in the middle of talking to me it would stop to do work or searches. It did not feel realtime.
Permission settings. There is a form where you can automatically allow actions you describe in natural language. I tried to allow it to run Claude on my computer or Send certain emails automatically, but the settings achieved nothing.
Coding. I wasn't able to make it use Claude, and its own work is worse than me using Opus 5.5 in Claude Code.
- What worked well -
Planning flights, accessing newspapers from my online library, checking stock in online stores, sending regular summaries of events and weather to plan activities.
Well the start the article saying they're not affiliated with Anthropic, and then talk about "Duet", saying "anthropic has done it again". They then list a handful of products they've tried, including "a host of other personal-assistant-type harnesses".
Is it not obvious that this is an Anthropic-made "personal-assistant-type harnesses"?
Meh, I think it's fine for blog posts to assume familiarity like this if it reflects their niche. They're writing for the type of person who already knows what Duet is. It's not the NYT where there's a massive general audience.
In fact, the choice not to explain things tells me a lot about the shared knowledge of a niche when I'm looking in from the outside. I don't mind the extra digging to decode it and the implied familiarity gives me information about its importance.
The killer feature is having the best model behind it. Not so easy to copy.
Grok Bot tries to compete with a really good harness/infra and the team is doing a great job but having Grok as a model behind id is a huge disadvantage.
Every time I see an article about another agentic harness all I can think is "people still run other people's code?"
In all seriousness, the complaints here just feel like UI friction you can address yourself if you just build your own harness (e.g. snappy replies -> parallel threads and appending to common context).
I’m on the same opinion. Why do I need to limit myself to something proprietary and in somebody else’s control when I can build and morph a tool to my needs.
The only reason I even look at frontier lab apps is for inspiration or shortcuts to my own implementation.
Using their apps feels like QA testing a trainwreck anyway with all of their UI/UX being an afterthought.
Once the novelty wears off it goes in the drawer next to the rest of AI innovation
I’m excited to try this. I got Instinct after hearing all the hype and it is basically completely useless. Fails at the most basic browser navigation type tasks.
Right now the consumer agent players are trying to pretend they have decent functionality that will exist 3-6 months so they can get marketshare. So hopefully Anthropic is sticking to their underpromise and over deliver.
I'm amazed anyone on HN is willing to run Muse that isn't a FB employee or tech journalist.
I don't trust Facebook or Zuckerberg, but I also don't really care about my own personal privacy from large corporations. I will use whatever is best/cheapest, generally. And I say this as someone who hates advertising and adtech.
Or GrokBot that isn’t an Elon employee.
That's because HN is an echo chamber. Plenty of tech people use and enjoy Muse/Instagram/Facebook, but the would be downvoted if they expressed it.
Well, I guess this is the point I start getting left behind.
I dunno, Hermes has been real hard to beat lately.
I have to agree. I've been using it for a few days now after coming from GrokBot, then Muse, then Dots. None really clicked for me within the first day. Duet seems different. I haven't quite pegged it, but off the top of my hand:
1. Yes, channels really are useful
2. It does seem to be using Opus 5.5 behind the scenes because, shockingly, it's not screwing everything up like the others usually did
3. Agree that the answers are short and to the point. If you want more info, you just pop open whatever task (separate from channels) it started and you can see what it's doing.
Seems like more time in the oven might have paid off here.
Also, to be clear, this is purely used as a personal assistant by me. I still use omp+Paseo for all of my day to day work. I find the separation of concerns kind of nice.
I started using Grok Bot a few days ago and I have seen zero screwups.
I don't know what I'd need a channel for, creating bots/personas seems more natural.
Adding credentials is essential, contrary to what the author of the article said. I gave it my library login and it can fetch newspapers for me instead of me clicking through the app every day.
When I had to provide a GitLab token, it nicely spawned a box for me to save the credential.
Voice calls. The quick responses are often dumb while the proper model does the thinking, and in the middle of talking to me it would stop to do work or searches. It did not feel realtime.Permission settings. There is a form where you can automatically allow actions you describe in natural language. I tried to allow it to run Claude on my computer or Send certain emails automatically, but the settings achieved nothing.
Coding. I wasn't able to make it use Claude, and its own work is worse than me using Opus 5.5 in Claude Code.
Planning flights, accessing newspapers from my online library, checking stock in online stores, sending regular summaries of events and weather to plan activities.I’ve hacked together my own version of this, basically a Swift app to manage secure access so I control the thing that has full disk access.
And then run a coding agent to manage calendar, emails, research projects against my work history, etc, with TouchID for the sensitive pieces.
It’s incredible, I hope to never put a flight on my calendar by hand again, and soon I won’t be buying them, either.
my rpi5 + wireguard + pi.dev is my 'duet'
Note to everyone writing blog posts: Please start your post with one or two sentences explaining what you're posting about.
What is Duet? I have no idea even after skimming the article.
Edit: first google result is https://www.duetdisplay.com
Well the start the article saying they're not affiliated with Anthropic, and then talk about "Duet", saying "anthropic has done it again". They then list a handful of products they've tried, including "a host of other personal-assistant-type harnesses".
Is it not obvious that this is an Anthropic-made "personal-assistant-type harnesses"?
https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet
The first two sentences menthon anthropic so its this. https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet
Meh, I think it's fine for blog posts to assume familiarity like this if it reflects their niche. They're writing for the type of person who already knows what Duet is. It's not the NYT where there's a massive general audience.
In fact, the choice not to explain things tells me a lot about the shared knowledge of a niche when I'm looking in from the outside. I don't mind the extra digging to decode it and the implied familiarity gives me information about its importance.
It’s an Anthropic product not yet released. I think.
https://duet.so/
That is not the official anthropic link
https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet
Sounds like things the competition will copy in a few days? Or am I missing something?
What do you mean copy? This is the copy, it's already behind Muse, Dots
The killer feature is having the best model behind it. Not so easy to copy. Grok Bot tries to compete with a really good harness/infra and the team is doing a great job but having Grok as a model behind id is a huge disadvantage.
[Anthropic Claude] Duet is the future of chatbot interaction
Every time I see an article about another agentic harness all I can think is "people still run other people's code?"
In all seriousness, the complaints here just feel like UI friction you can address yourself if you just build your own harness (e.g. snappy replies -> parallel threads and appending to common context).
I’m on the same opinion. Why do I need to limit myself to something proprietary and in somebody else’s control when I can build and morph a tool to my needs.
The only reason I even look at frontier lab apps is for inspiration or shortcuts to my own implementation.
Using their apps feels like QA testing a trainwreck anyway with all of their UI/UX being an afterthought.
It is just rsync after all right?
I think it's more cron jobs, RESTful-type wait and react methods, and a harness that is calibrated to being a good assistant.
i.e. It saw I had an optometry-type appointment this morning and supplied some questions I might want to ask or consider.