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.
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.
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.
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.
- What did not work well -
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 -
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"?
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.