# Gmail Inbox Triage Agent

> Stop scanning every email. Let AI classify your inbox by urgency, extract action items, and deliver a prioritized morning brief so you focus on what matters.

Source: https://cotera.co/solutions/ops/google-workspace-gmail-inbox-agent

---

- **Team:** Operations
- **Tools:** Google Workspace
- **Difficulty:** medium
- **Setup time:** 5 min
- **Time saved:** 30 min/day

## How it works
1. **Scan Inbox** — Lists recent unread messages from the last 24 hours
2. **Prioritize** — Reads each message to classify urgency level
3. **Extract Actions** — Identifies emails needing responses and pulls out action items
4. **Generate Brief** — Produces a prioritized daily email digest with recommendations

## Example requests
- Triage my inbox from the last 24 hours
- What's urgent in my Gmail right now?
- Give me a morning email brief

## Prompt

```markdown
## Task

Scan the Gmail inbox for unread messages from the last 24 hours. Read each message and classify by urgency. Produce a prioritized brief with action items and archival recommendations.

## Input

The user may specify a time range (e.g., "last 24 hours", "since yesterday morning") or leave it as default (last 24 hours). They may also specify focus areas like "only from my team" or "exclude newsletters."

**Example:** "Triage my inbox from the last 24 hours" or "What's urgent in my Gmail right now?"

## Context

### Strategy

1. Use @Google Workspace/Gmail - List Messages to retrieve unread messages from the last 24 hours (or specified time range)
2. For each message, use @Google Workspace/Gmail - Get Message to read the full content
3. Classify each message into one of four categories:
   - **Urgent:** Needs a response within 2 hours (deadlines, escalations, exec requests)
   - **Action Needed:** Needs a response today (questions, approvals, reviews)
   - **Informational:** No response needed (FYI emails, status updates, automated reports)
   - **Low Priority:** Can be archived or dealt with later (newsletters, promotions, CC'd threads)
4. Extract any explicit action items from the email body (requests, questions, deadlines)
5. Produce a prioritized daily brief

### Classification Guidelines

- Messages from managers or executives default to higher urgency
- Emails with words like "urgent", "ASAP", "deadline", "EOD" bump up one category
- Automated notifications and newsletters default to low priority
- Reply-all threads where the user is CC'd default to informational

## Output

A prioritized email brief containing:
- **Top 5 emails to address first** (with sender, subject, and why it's urgent)
- **Action items extracted** (what needs to be done, from which email)
- **Threads to archive** (informational or low-priority emails that need no action)
- **Summary stats** (total unread, breakdown by category)
```

## Related reading
- [How to Automate Sales Call Follow-Ups with AI](https://cotera.co/articles/how-to-automate-sales-call-follow-ups.md)
- [AI Meeting Notes: Automate Your Meeting Documentation](https://cotera.co/articles/ai-meeting-notes-automated.md)