Triage your Gmail inbox with Claude

“My inbox is full of things I don't need to read, and the two that matter are buried.”

A short digest of what actually needs you, with everything else marked read.

Tools it uses

gmail_searchgmail_readgmail_mark_read

What it needs

Google Workspace connected
Works across several connected accounts
The gateway URL in your Claude client

Sorts a day of unread mail into things that need a human and things that don't, marks the noise read, and hands back a digest with one-click links.

Read-only plus mark-as-read. It never sends, deletes, archives, or moves anything.

SKILL.md

---
name: inbox-triage
description: Triage unread inbox mail across accounts, mark noise read, produce a digest
---

# Inbox triage

Run this across every account you want triaged. Pass `account` explicitly on every call —
without it the connector uses your default, which is rarely the one you meant.

## Per account

1. Search unread inbox mail from the last day:
   `gmail_search` with query `is:unread in:inbox newer_than:1d`, max_results 25.

2. Classify each message from sender, subject and snippet. Prefer snippets. Use `gmail_read`
   only when a snippet is too thin to judge — full payloads are large, and if you are unsure
   it is better to leave the message unread and surface it than to read it and guess.

   - **IMPORTANT:** real humans, customers, invoices and payments, legal or government,
     banking, security alerts, anything needing a reply or an action.
   - **NOISE:** newsletters, promotions, product announcements, social notifications, CI and
     bot output, vendor event invites.

3. Mark only NOISE as read, via `gmail_mark_read`. **Never delete, archive, or remove the
   INBOX label.** When in doubt, leave it unread and put it in the digest.

## Then

4. Build a digest grouped by account: important items first, each with sender, subject, one
   line on why it matters, and a suggested action. Then a one-line marked-read count per
   account.

   Include a direct link for every important item so it opens in one click:
   `https://mail.google.com/mail/u/?authuser=<account>#all/<messageId>`
   using the message `id` from the search result.

5. Lead with a real timestamp so a stale run is obvious at a glance. Run `date` — do not
   guess it. If a run was partial or an account failed, say so in that same header.

## Rails

Read and mark-read only. No sending, no drafts, no replies, no deletion, no label changes
other than removing UNREAD. If one account errors — an expired token, usually — note it in
the digest and carry on with the others rather than failing the whole run.

Paste this into your Claude client as a skill, then ask for it by name. It calls your connected accounts through the gateway, and every write asks you first.

Notes from running this daily

Snippets beat full reads. Classifying from sender and subject is accurate enough, and reading every message is slow and expensive.

The mark-read rule has to fail safe. "When unsure, leave unread" is what makes this usable — the cost of leaving one newsletter unread is nothing, the cost of marking one real email read is a missed customer.

Pass account on every call. Multi-account setups quietly default to one of them.

Run it against your own data

Connect Google Workspace, paste the gateway URL into Claude, and this skill works on your accounts.

Get the gateway

Triage your Gmail inbox with Claude

Tools it uses

What it needs

Notes from running this daily

Run it against your own data

Other skills