Your next assistant might work the night shift

Customer replies waiting for your approval. Unpaid invoices spotted before you start chasing them. A morning brief that tells you what needs attention.

That’s the pitch behind Claude Duet: an assistant that keeps working after you close your laptop. It’s early, but the idea will sound familiar to anyone who runs a business and wishes the admin would finish itself.

Also inside: AI shoppers, a new way to sign in without sharing passwords, and a website security fix worth asking your web person about.

Anthropic introduced Claude Duet on October 21. The company says it can keep working while your devices are off, using the accounts and information you connect to Claude.

Its examples include preparing a morning brief, checking for unpaid invoices and drafting customer follow-ups using earlier conversations. The appeal is easy to picture: you open your laptop and some of the work is already prepared.

For a photographer, that might mean a draft follow-up for a client who asked about a booking. For a shop owner, reminders for outstanding invoices. Those are possible uses, not results we’ve tested.

There’s a catch: Duet is a research preview with a waitlist, starting with US Pro and Max users. Its background work uses the same plan allowance. Anthropic says it asks before sending messages, paying, signing or deleting, and warns that it can still misunderstand a conversation or get the urgency wrong.

My first job for it would be small: “Show me the customers waiting for an answer, and draft replies for me to review.” That would be useful on a busy morning. It would also make mistakes easier to spot before a customer sees them.

The interesting shift is from answering a question to coming back with work prepared. That’s a much bigger promise for someone wearing five hats.

AI helped researchers find a serious security flaw in PHP, software used by WordPress and other websites. Under vulnerable conditions, the two flaws known as php2shell can let someone take control of a server without logging in.

OpenAI describes the AI-assisted discovery. Another security company, Wiz, independently reported both flaws. The people maintaining PHP produced the fixes, and PHP urged users to update.

The PHP Foundation’s account shows why this took more than finding the problem. Early warning signs appeared in 2024. Possible repairs risked breaking other software. Later reports clarified the danger, people worked through weekends, and a leak brought the release forward by a day.

For a business owner, the consequence is simpler than the engineering: a website can have a fix available without that fix reaching the site your customers use.

The useful answer comes from whoever maintains your website: does this affect us, has the relevant fix been applied, and what still needs doing? The latest official guidance matters; a software number spotted by an online checker cannot settle those questions.

AI can help people discover problems sooner. Protecting the business still depends on someone following through.

1Password is making AI logins less awkward. Its new offering lets an assistant sign in without receiving your passwords; you approve the login on your device. That could help owners delegate chores across business accounts. Personal integrations are rolling out for Individual and Families plans; check whether your assistant is supported.

Walmart is preparing for customers who shop through AI. It plans purchasing profiles with spending limits and order tracking, due next month. The connection for assistant companies starts in beta. For sellers, this points to a possible new route customers could use to discover products; it isn’t a reason to rebuild your store today.

OpenAI wants to make routine decisions easier to build into software. Its decision service chooses from answers a business defines, such as where a customer request belongs or when to involve a person. Owners building customer tools could use it for better handoffs. It requires technical setup; it isn’t a ready-made feature in your inbox.

A logo in the corner cannot make a generic flyer feel like your company. The colors, type, artwork and layout need to work together.

We built a private design skill for our own work. We’re keeping that skill private, but the approach is useful to teach: turn your brand rules into instructions an AI can reuse, then give each design a clear brief.

For this workshop, we created a plant shop with its own identity, explored three layouts and made the flyer above. Then we changed the date while keeping the logo, artwork and other facts intact.

The useful habit: keep brand rules, reusable instructions and this event’s details separate. That gives you room to try a fresh idea without letting the AI invent a new identity—or carry last month’s date into the next campaign.

The free workshop walks through the whole process, with an original public starter skill, copy-ready prompts, brand and event templates, and the editable example files. Use the complete PDF as you build your own version.