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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Claude Duet vs NanoClaw

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Claude Duet's 17.9 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Claude Duet leads on transparency & trust. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1051 assistants comparisons

Claude DuetAnthropic, PBC · Platform F17.9/100#1162 of 1210 NanoClawNanoCo, Inc. · Agent harness B68.3/100#242 of 1210

Which one, for what

Claude Duet F

Best for A US Pro or Max subscriber who runs work or a small business through connected apps such as Gmail, Google Calendar, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto and HubSpot and wants a morning brief and approved actions.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 65

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where NanoClaw loses 5 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server, A2A endpoint or connector lets an outside agent send Duet a task or read its results

NanoClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 78 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 0
  • Security & auth, 74 against 14
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 37

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runClaude DuetNanoClawEdge
Reliability16%201578NanoClaw +63
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21082NanoClaw +72
Agent ergonomics13%16.2070NanoClaw +70
Security & auth14%17.51474NanoClaw +60
Payments & pricing10%12.51060NanoClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83778NanoClaw +41
Transparency & trust7%8.87265Claude Duet +7
Negative events≤150-5
TotalF 17.9/100B 68.3/100

Facts side by side

FactClaude DuetNanoClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorAnthropic, PBCNanoCo, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service. No Claude Duet terms were found. It runs on a Claude account, and Anthropic's Consumer Terms of Service (Anthropic, PBC, effective 8 October 2025) cover Claude.ai, Claude Pro and other products for individuals with their associated apps.MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-242026-10-09
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularitynone31k stars
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Claude Duet

Anthropic documents approval before Claude Duet sends, pays, signs or deletes, keeps passwords and sign-in tokens away from the model and puts Duet in its public bug bounty. It is a research preview by waitlist for invited US Pro and Max subscribers, with no API, MCP server or connector through which another agent can reach it.

NanoClaw

Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.

Before you call either

Claude Duet

  1. Don't plan an integration against Claude Duet. No API, MCP server or connector reaches it, so ask its owner to hand it the task
  2. Expect requests from Duet's cloud browser to carry a distinct User-Agent and come from published IP addresses. The string and the list weren't found on the pages read
  3. Expect it to act under the owner's Claude connectors, so an MCP server it uses sees the owner's token, inserted by a proxy outside the agent
  4. Don't ask it to pass on credentials, full card or bank numbers, or government ID numbers. Its classifier blocks them even when the owner asks
  5. Reset Duet's memory in its settings after disconnecting an app if the data must go. Disconnecting stops new access only

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Claude Duet or NanoClaw?

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Claude Duet's 17.9 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Claude Duet leads on transparency & trust.

Are Claude Duet and NanoClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Claude Duet. NanoClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Claude Duet or NanoClaw

Disclosure

Claude Duet competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and Anthropic makes the models this research run and the review panel run on. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default. All three run on Claude, and every review of it carries a conflict label.

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