Mailbox triage

Mailbox triage turns an inbox you dread into one short message you read in two minutes. Your agent reads your threads, decides by rules and by judgment what needs you, archives the rest where you can always get it back, and reports the money, deadlines, security events and people buried in the mail. It learns from what you do with each digest. Nothing is deleted, and nothing is sent without you.

What it does

Start: hand this page to your agent

For the desktop app 0.6.10 or newer.

Copy this page's link and send it to your agent. It installs the skill under Requires and then follows the rest of this page with you. Skills work as soon as they are installed; there is nothing to restart. You can also Install Email Triage Pro by hand from the Marketplace. It is free. Installed skills refresh on their own; see how skills stay up to date.

Requires

• Skills: email-triage-pro

Before you start

The skill needs two things and sets both up on the first run. You never paste a password or a key into the chat.

• A way to read your Gmail. Your agent asks one question: use the Gmail connector you may already have (no setup, but slow: a few hundred emails take 15 to 25 minutes), or a Gmail app password (recommended: two minutes of setup, then much faster runs and better sorting, because it sees the real headers).
• A Gemini API key of your own. The model judges every thread with today's date and the thread's age. The key is yours, so you share no quota, and a large first sweep costs well under a dollar.

If you pick the app password, the skill writes GMAIL_ADDRESS=, GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD= and GEMINI_API_KEY= into the .env file in your workspace, with instructions as comments above each line, and opens the file for you. Create the app password in your Google Account (Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords), paste the 16 characters after GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD=, and add your address. Create a free Gemini key at aistudio.google.com/apikey and paste it after GEMINI_API_KEY=. Save. Your agent continues as soon as the login works and the key answers a test call. Nothing is read or archived before both check out.

Step 1 · The first run

One question, no forms, and the backlog swept.

Say "triage my inbox". The first run does three things:

• It learns who matters from your own mail. Ninety days of your Sent folder and your calendar tell it who you write to, which domain is your team, which companies you meet, and which senders are newsletters or automation.
• It sweeps the backlog, newest first. Up to 6,000 threads over an app password, or 600 through the connector. Everything it archives is checked on the server and can be restored.
• It schedules itself for two runs every business day.

Step 2 · The digest

Four groups, every line tagged with what happened to it.

Every line carries its own label and its fate, so a reply is never ambiguous:

"Needs you" leaves out threads you already answered (it reads your Sent folder every run), calendar mail about events that have passed, and human threads unanswered for more than 60 days, which are archived with their age in the line. It keeps your upcoming meetings until the date passes, and active customer threads stay visible for two weeks even when it is their move.

Step 3 · Reply by label

Step 4 · Twice a day

After the first sweep, runs cover the last 36 hours and take seconds. They run at 08:30 and 16:30 on weekdays and skip US holidays; say "run triage at 7 and 3" to change the times. The digest lands wherever you last spoke to your agent: a room, Slack, Telegram or the app.

Items you have not dealt with are carried under "Still with you" with W labels (W1, W2) until you say done. Voice works from the same run: "what's urgent" answers from the latest digest.

Step 5 · The cockpit

Your mail is also a ledger.

A second pass turns mail into facts with their evidence:

• Money. Receipts and invoices (it reads the PDF when the amount is only there), subscriptions, renewals, failed payments, usage limits, trials ending, refunds. The model copies what is printed; every total is computed in code, and any amount not found word for word in the email or PDF is rejected.
• Deadlines and expiry. "Your project will be deleted in 48 hours", "2FA required by June 9".
• Security events. New sign-ins, permission requests, password changes, API keys.
• Legal, hiring, customers, investors, travel. Signature requests, candidates, who is waiting on whom, reservations.

The digest carries new and critical ones as a short Heads-up block and one Money line.

The report page

Each run also renders the digest as one self-contained page: Overview, Needs you grouped into shelves, Heads-up, Expenses (totals with their inputs, subscriptions, a six-month chart, spend by vendor, failed payments), the Cockpit, and the Archived groups, collapsed. Same layout every time.

If your agent has a tool for publishing pages, it publishes the report as a private web page and puts the link first in the digest. Otherwise the page stays a file on your Mac and opens in your browser. See Your data for what that page contains.

What it learns

Every decision is recorded. Each run starts by reading what you did with the last digests: what you restored, answered, trashed or ignored. Clear signals update the sender table quietly (at most one silent change per sender, ever). Anything less certain becomes one yes or no question at the end of a digest.

Rules you can set by saying so

• Schedule and delivery: "run triage at 7 and 3", "D first", "shorter".
• People and accounts: "treat [email protected] as a VIP", "we are waiting on Acme for the contract".
• Groups: "always … in D", "never archive …", "forward newsletters to …".
• Mail access: "switch to imap" or "switch to the connector".
• Money scope: tell it which vendors are business and which are personal.

Your data and guardrails

What stays on your Mac. The sender table, your rules, the decision ledger, the money and facts ledgers, the report files and the attachment cache are files in your workspace folder. Your app password and Gemini key live in your own .env. Over the app password, mail is read directly from Gmail to your Mac; through the connector, your agent's Gmail connector reads it.

What can leave it:

• The judging calls go to Google's Gemini under your own key, on your terms with Google. Use a paid-tier key; the paid tier does not train on your data.
• The report page, if your agent publishes it. It holds senders' names and addresses, subjects, one-line summaries of threads, amounts, vendors and subscriptions, deadlines and security events. It is private to you unless you share its link.
• The digest your agent posts to a room or chat is stored like any message there. The mail behind it is not.

What it never does:

• Nothing is deleted. Archiving is a label change, verified on the server for every message, and every archive is restorable by label or all at once.
• Nothing is sent, signed or bought for you. Drafts wait for your final text; forwards only go to addresses you allowed; it never completes a purchase or accepts an agreement.
• Threads are found by Message-ID, never by subject, and senders are judged by domain before subject, because subjects are easy to fake.
• Verification codes are left alone. One-time codes are recognised, never used, and archived once they expire.
• Leaving is complete. Delete the skill and its workspace folder, and revoke the app password in your Google Account.

Speed & cost

The skill is free. Your only cost is Gemini usage under your key, usually a few cents a day. As an example, on one 6,000-thread inbox read over an app password, the first sweep took about four minutes from reading to a verified archive and a delivered digest, and daily runs took 15 to 30 seconds.