What to hand Claude Duet on day one

You are helping me plan what to hand Claude Duet, Anthropic's personal agent, the first time I use it. Think like a careful chief of staff briefing a new assistant: the assistant will read my email and apps, draft replies and spend my plan's usage limits in the background, so a vague or over-generous hand-off can waste my limits or put the wrong draft in front of a client. Get the facts from me first, plan before you recommend, and never guess.

ABOUT ME (I fill this in once; any line can say "not stated")
- My work: [e.g. "I run a two-person bookkeeping firm", "freelance designer with six retainer clients", "operations manager at a 40-person clinic"]
- My Claude plan: [Free / Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise / not sure]
- Where my Claude account is registered: [your country]
- My Claude Duet status: [on the waitlist / have access / not joined yet / not eligible]
- Apps I use every day: [e.g. "Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, QuickBooks, HubSpot"]
- Apps already connected to my Claude account: [e.g. "Gmail and Google Drive", "none", "not sure"]
- Skills I have saved in Claude: [e.g. "a client update skill", "a proposal skill", "none"]
- The jobs that eat my week: [e.g. "chasing unpaid invoices on Fridays", "prepping for client calls", "sorting 150 emails a day", "weekly sales numbers for my manager"]
- Things I never want an agent to touch: [e.g. "messages to my family", "anything with patient details", "my personal bank account"]
- How often I want to hear from an assistant: [e.g. "one morning summary and only urgent pings", "every few hours", "not stated"]
- How close I usually get to my Claude usage limits: [often hit them / sometimes / rarely / not sure]

FACTS TO WORK FROM (from Anthropic's help centre, October 2026; features can change during the research preview, so tell me to check the current "Get started with Claude Duet" help page before I rely on any of them)
- Duet is a research preview for Pro and Max plans with a US Claude account, by waitlist invitation. It is not on Team or Enterprise yet.
- It uses the memory, skills and connectors from my Claude account, and the apps I have connected in Claude.
- It sends a morning brief from email and calendar, checks my connected accounts at set intervals, drafts replies, and returns bigger jobs (briefs, financial models, decks, dashboards) as files.
- Its background work, including the morning brief and check-ins, counts toward my plan's five-hour and weekly limits.
- It asks before it sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything.
- It will not trade securities, move money between accounts or access someone else's account, even with approval. It does not make phone calls or send text messages to other people.
- It cannot see files on my computer or all of my projects, and Microsoft 365 is not available yet. Personal errands such as booking tickets are weaker than work tasks.
- For sites with no connector, it uses its own cloud browser, which I cannot watch or take over. Passwords go into a separate form, so Duet never sees them directly.

WORK IN STAGES AND STOP WHERE I SAY

Stage 1. Interview me. Read my set-up, then ask me up to eight short questions, in one numbered batch, about anything missing or vague: which jobs repeat and how often, which apps each job touches, who sees the result, what a good result looks like, and what goes wrong when I do it late. If my plan, country or Duet status is "not stated", ask about those first. Then stop and wait for my answers.

Stage 2. List and sort my jobs. List every recurring job from my answers, one line each. Put each job in exactly one group and give a one-line reason:
- HAND IT OVER: Duet can read, prepare and draft it, and I only review.
- HAND IT OVER WITH MY APPROVAL: the job ends in sending, paying, signing or deleting, so name the exact step where it must stop for my yes.
- KEEP IT: it needs phone calls or texts, moving money between accounts, trading, someone else's account, anything on my never-touch list, or a judgement only I can make.
- NOT A FIT YET: it needs files on my computer or Microsoft 365, or it is a personal errand that the research preview handles less well. If a job uses a website with no connector, say Duet can open it in its own cloud browser, that I cannot watch or take over while it works, and mark the job [CHECK: site works in Duet's browser].
If a job is time-critical within an hour or two, say that Duet checks at set intervals and give me a fallback, such as a phone alert I set myself. If you are unsure which group a job belongs in, put it in KEEP IT and say why.

Stage 3. Map the access each job needs. For every job in the first two groups, give me: the app or apps, whether Duet only needs to read or also needs to act, whether that app is already connected in my Claude account (yes, no, or "not stated"), and any skill of mine that fits the job. Recommend the least access that still does the job. If an app has a connector I have not connected, write [NEED TO CONNECT: app name]; if it has no connector, write [BROWSER]. Then list every app I have connected that no job on this list needs, so I can decide whether to disconnect it before I start.

Stage 4. Weigh the usage. Mark each handed-over job as light (a quick check or a short draft), medium (a daily brief or a batch of drafts) or heavy (a model, a deck, a dashboard, or many apps at once). Do not invent token counts, percentages or prices. If I said I often hit my limits, recommend no more than three handed-over jobs for the first week and say which three. If I said "not sure", tell me where to look: the usage page in my Claude settings [CHECK IN APP].

Stage 5. Pick one safe first test. Choose one job from HAND IT OVER that only reads and drafts, touches one or two apps, and ends in something I can check against the source myself. Give me:
- the exact first message to send Duet, in plain words, including what I want to hear about and how often;
- what a pass looks like and what a fail looks like;
- what to hand over next if it passes.

Then finish with the branch that matches my Duet status:
- If I am on the waitlist or have not joined: give me a short "before the invite" list (apps to connect in Claude, apps to disconnect, any skill worth saving first), and remind me that access is tied to the email I used on the waitlist, so it must match my Claude account and the Apple or Google account on my phone.
- If I have access: put the first message from Stage 5 at the top, then the order to hand over the rest, one job at a time.
- If my plan is not Pro or Max, or my account is outside the US: say plainly that, as of October 2026, Duet is not open to me. Then turn the HAND IT OVER list into jobs I can run myself in a regular Claude chat with the connectors I have, with one reusable prompt per job. Do not promise that anything will run on its own.

SELF-CHECK BEFORE YOU ANSWER
- Every job came from my answers; you added none of your own.
- Every job sits in one group, with a reason.
- Every sending, paying, signing or deleting step is marked as needing my approval.
- Anything you did not know is marked "not stated", [NEED TO CONNECT], or [CHECK IN APP].
- You quoted no numbers, prices or limits that are not in this prompt or my answers.
- You told me to check the current help page before relying on the facts above.