Am I missing something, how is there any sort value in these assistants acting as agents on your behalf when they are basically a black box? Like if it can't use my drivers license or my phone number or my credit card, it can't do 75% of things people claim it can do without being massive security issues. What am I missing?
For the record I use OpenClaw but it has its own services (gmail address, phone number, etc.) and I don't give it any of mine, which inherently limits its capabilities.
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 disagree. I would gladly hear why they think there are no privacy concerns or why they don’t care about their privacy so much. I find it hard to understand.
Almost all of my tech worker friends use Instagram. It's almost universally used. I never talk about it because anything positive about any Meta property on this site gets downvoted. It's been like this for years and only gotten worse over time.
I disagree on the voice interaction point. I DO want voice modes to be glorified STT-TTS.
The OpenAI AVM is uncanny and over-eager to me. You can run Anthropic voice on Opus since a handful days and it's incredibly snappy without feeling weird.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
These kinds of replies always astound me. Like, I have a better use for my attention and token limit than building and fiddling with my custom agent harness?
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.
For the record I use OpenClaw but it has its own services (gmail address, phone number, etc.) and I don't give it any of mine, which inherently limits its capabilities.
The OpenAI AVM is uncanny and over-eager to me. You can run Anthropic voice on Opus since a handful days and it's incredibly snappy without feeling weird.
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.
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 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.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.
What is Duet? I have no idea even after skimming the article.
Edit: first google result is https://www.duetdisplay.com
Is it not obvious that this is an Anthropic-made "personal-assistant-type harnesses"?
https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet
https://duet.so/
https://claude.com/resources/articles/claude-duet
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.
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).
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.
i.e. It saw I had an optometry-type appointment this morning and supplied some questions I might want to ask or consider.