AI Handles My Inbox
My inbox was a second job. 80 to 120 emails per day, 2 to 3 hours of processing time, and the constant anxiety of something important buried in the noise. AI now handles 80% of my inbox before I open it. I spend 25 minutes on email per day. Nothing important gets missed.
The Actual System
Classification and prioritisation
Every email that arrives is classified by Make.com and Claude before it touches my inbox. The classification: Urgent (requires my response today — client escalation, time-sensitive decision, legal or financial matter), Needs Response (requires my reply but not today — standard client emails, partner queries, team questions that require my input), Delegate (someone on my team should handle this — labelled with who should handle it and why), FYI (I need to know but do not need to act — newsletters, project updates, automated notifications), and Archive (no value whatsoever). Urgent and Needs Response go to my priority inbox. Everything else is handled or digested for me.
Draft response generation
For every email in the Needs Response category, Claude generates a draft response before I see the original email. The draft is placed as a comment or label in Gmail (using the Gmail module’s labelling system) or sent to a Slack channel where I can review and approve. For 70 to 80% of Needs Response emails, the AI draft is accurate and well-toned — I add a sentence or two of personalisation and send. For the remaining 20 to 30%, the draft gives me a starting point that I rewrite significantly. In either case, the cognitive load of starting from a blank reply is eliminated.
Daily digest for FYI emails
All FYI-classified emails are compiled into a daily digest that arrives at 5pm. The digest is a Claude-generated summary: 3 bullet points per email maximum, grouped by topic, with any items that are actually more important than FYI flagged for my attention. The digest takes 5 minutes to read and gives me everything I need to know from the 40 to 50 FYI emails that arrive each day — without reading any of them individually. The anxiety of potential buried important emails is eliminated because the classification and digest system is comprehensive.
The Technical Setup
Connect Gmail to Make.com
Create a Make.com scenario with a Gmail Watch Emails trigger — this fires for every new email in your primary inbox. Configure the Gmail OAuth connection in Make.com (straightforward authentication flow). Set the scenario to run every 15 minutes — emails are processed and classified within 15 minutes of arrival. This connection is the foundation; everything else builds on top of it.
Build the AI classification step
Add an HTTP module calling the Claude API. System prompt: You are an executive email assistant. Classify this email into exactly one category: URGENT (requires same-day response from the executive), NEEDS_RESPONSE (requires executive reply, not urgent), DELEGATE (someone else should handle – specify who), FYI (executive needs to know, no action needed), or ARCHIVE (no value). Also generate a 1-sentence summary and, if NEEDS_RESPONSE or DELEGATE, a 3-sentence draft reply. Return as JSON. Map the email sender, subject, and body from the Gmail module into the prompt. Parse the JSON response to extract category, summary, and draft.
Apply Gmail labels and route
Add a Gmail Create Label module for each category (URGENT, NEEDS_RESPONSE, etc.) if not already created. Add a Gmail Modify Message module to apply the appropriate label based on the classification output. For URGENT: also add a Gmail Send Email module to send yourself an SMS notification via email-to-SMS gateway (most mobile carriers support this — your phone number at carrier.com). For DELEGATE: add a Slack module to post to the relevant channel with the email summary and the suggested handler.
Build the FYI daily digest
A separate Make.com scenario runs at 4:30pm daily. It retrieves all emails labelled FYI from today. Passes them to Claude: Summarise these FYI emails into a daily digest. For each email: sender, subject, and 2-3 sentence summary. Group by topic where possible. Flag any item that may be more important than FYI based on content. Keep the total digest under 500 words. Send the digest to yourself as a single email. Five minutes to read, fully informed, ready to close the day.
What if the AI misclassifies an important email?
The classification will occasionally be wrong — particularly for emails with unusual context or subtle urgency signals. Two safeguards: (1) the URGENT label sends an SMS notification, so any true urgent email that is correctly classified reaches you immediately, and (2) spend 5 minutes at the start of each day scanning the NEEDS_RESPONSE and DELEGATE labels to catch any URGENT emails that were incorrectly classified. After 2 weeks of reviewing misclassifications and refining the prompt, the accuracy typically exceeds 90%. The remaining 10% of misclassifications are caught by the daily scan.
Should I do this with a work email or a personal email?
Build this for your primary work email first — the inbox where business correspondence arrives. Personal email typically has lower volume and less urgency diversity, making automation less impactful. If you manage multiple work email addresses (a personal executive address and a team or project address), build the triage system on your personal address first — that is where the cognitive load is highest. Extend to team inboxes where the team is willing and the volume justifies the build.
Want Your Inbox Managed by AI?
SA Solutions builds Gmail and Outlook email triage systems — AI classification, draft generation, delegation routing, and daily digest delivery.
