Email Triage Agent

AI Email Triage That Categorizes, Drafts, and Flags — Every 30 Minutes

The average knowledge worker spends 2.5 hours per day on email. Most of that time is spent making the same low-value decisions: is this urgent? Does it need a reply? What should I say? The Email Triage Agent makes those decisions automatically — categorizing every email, drafting replies for the ones that need them, and flagging the urgent ones — so you only touch your inbox when it matters.

What It Does

This workflow runs every 30 minutes (and can be triggered manually for an instant triage pass):

1. Inbox Scan: Fetches up to 50 unread emails from the last 24 hours that haven't already been triaged. Excludes emails that already have triage labels.

2. AI Classification: For each email, Claude evaluates:

• Category: action required, FYI only, waiting on someone, promotional, or spam
• Urgency score (1–10): based on sender (VIP list gets elevated), content signals, time-sensitivity, and subject matter
• Reply needed: whether the email requires a response
• Summary: one-sentence description of what the email is about

3. Draft Replies: For emails above the reply threshold (default: urgency 6+), Claude drafts a reply. The draft is calibrated to the email's tone and context — not a generic template.

4. Labeling: Each email gets labeled in Gmail based on its classification:

• Triage/Action — needs your attention
• Triage/FYI — informational, no action needed
• Triage/Waiting — you're waiting on a response
• Triage/Promo — promotional, low priority

5. Urgent Alerts: Emails above the urgency alert threshold (default: 7) trigger an immediate Telegram notification so you see them without having to open your inbox.

6. VIP Sender Handling: Emails from your configured VIP list (boss, key clients, board members) get elevated urgency scoring regardless of content.

Who This Is For

Anyone with a high-volume inbox who currently spends significant time triaging email manually. Most effective for people receiving 50+ emails per day across a mix of categories. Also useful as a "catch-up" tool after travel or time away.

What's Included

• email-triage-agent.yml — complete workflow with 30-minute cron trigger + manual trigger, Gmail integration, AI classification, reply drafting, labeling, and Telegram alerts
• Configurable VIP sender list
• Configurable urgency threshold (when to alert) and reply threshold (when to draft)
• 24-hour lookback window (adjustable)
• Max 50 emails per run (adjustable)

Setup Steps

1. Install the workflow — copy email-triage-agent.yml into your OpenClaw workspace
2. Connect Gmail — authorize via the Gmail skill in OpenClaw settings
3. Configure VIP senders — add email addresses for people whose emails should always be elevated
4. Set thresholds — adjust urgency alert threshold and reply draft threshold to your preferences
5. Create Gmail labels — create the four Triage labels in Gmail (or let the workflow create them on first run)
6. Register the cron — openclaw cron add email-triage-agent.yml
7. Run it manually first — process your current backlog before the scheduled runs begin

Reading Your Triaged Inbox

After triage:

• Open Gmail and filter by Triage/Action to see what actually needs your attention
• Draft replies are saved in your Drafts folder, labeled with the original thread
• Urgent emails have already fired a Telegram notification
• Everything else is labeled and out of your way

Why This Beats Manual Inbox Management

The cognitive tax of email isn't reading the emails — it's the constant decision-making about priority and response. With this workflow, those decisions are made automatically every 30 minutes. You check your inbox when you have time, see a pre-sorted, pre-drafted inbox, and spend 20 minutes instead of 2 hours.

The key insight: you still read and send every email. The agent just does the sorting and drafting. Your inbox gets processed 48 times per day while you're doing other things.