Get an agent to sort and summarise your inbox every morning

Wake up to a prioritized inbox summary with action items already sorted by urgency and sender importance.

For anyone who starts the day with 80 unread · 8 steps · 7 min

How it works today.

You open your email and see 80+ messages from overnight. You scan subject lines trying to guess what needs immediate attention versus what can wait. Half the time you open the same email twice because you forgot whether that client message was urgent or just a check-in.

By the time you've triaged everything, it's 10am and you still haven't started actual work. Important emails get buried under newsletter unsubscribes, and you're never quite sure if you missed something critical in the pile.

Before you start.

All of it has to be true, or step one fails in a way that is annoying to debug.

Email client with API access or IMAP enabled (Gmail, Outlook, etc.)
A generalist agent platform account with email integration capabilities
Write access to create folders or labels in your email system
A list of your VIP contacts and their typical email patterns
Your calendar accessible to the agent for context on upcoming meetings

The steps.

Connect your email account to the agent platform
Go to your agent's integrations page and add your email provider. Grant read access to your inbox and sent items, plus write access to create labels or folders. Test the connection by having the agent fetch your last 10 emails.

Create email classification rules

Set up folders or labels for: Urgent Action Required, Meeting Requests, Client Communication, Internal Updates, and Low Priority. Most email platforms let you create these in the Labels or Folders section of settings.

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Classify this email into one of these categories: Urgent Action Required (needs response within 4 hours), Meeting Requests (calendar invites or scheduling), Client Communication (external stakeholders), Internal Updates (team announcements, FYIs), Low Priority (newsletters, automated notifications). Consider the sender, subject line, and content. Return only the category name.

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Build your VIP sender list
Create a document listing your most important contacts: direct manager, key clients, project stakeholders, and anyone whose emails should always surface first. Include their email addresses and relationship context.
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Based on this sender list: [paste your VIP contacts], determine if the email sender [sender email] is high priority. If yes, explain their relationship to you in one sentence. If no, just say 'Standard priority'.
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Set up the morning summary workflow
Configure the agent to run at your preferred time (7am, 8am, etc.) and process all unread emails from the last 16 hours. The agent should read each email, classify it, check sender priority, and note any deadlines mentioned in the content.
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Summarize this email in 2-3 sentences focusing on: what action is needed from me, any deadlines mentioned, and why this matters. If no action is needed, say 'FYI only'. Format: ACTION: [what you need to do] DEADLINE: [when, or 'none mentioned'] CONTEXT: [why this matters]
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Generate the daily digest format

Have the agent compile a single summary email or document with sections for each priority level. Start with urgent items, then meetings, then client communication. Include sender name, subject, and the action summary for each email.

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Create a morning email digest with these sections: URGENT (needs response today), MEETINGS (scheduling or calendar items), CLIENTS (external stakeholder communication), INTERNAL (team updates), LOW PRIORITY (everything else). For each email, show: Sender | Subject | Action needed | Deadline. Put the most time-sensitive items first within each section.

Test the classification accuracy
Run the workflow on your last 50 emails and review how it categorized them. Look for emails that got miscategorized - newsletters marked urgent, or client emails marked low priority. This breaks when the agent can't distinguish between automated emails and human-sent ones.
Set up automatic labeling
Configure the agent to apply the appropriate labels or move emails to folders after classification. This requires write permissions to your email account. Check that urgent emails get flagged or starred for easy identification when you open your actual inbox.
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Create exception handling rules
Define what happens when the agent encounters encrypted emails, emails with large attachments, or messages it cannot access. Set up a fallback category for these items so nothing gets lost in processing.
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I cannot process this email because: [reason - encrypted/attachment too large/access denied/other]. Please review manually. Sender: [sender] Subject: [subject] Received: [timestamp]
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What you keep.

Automating the typing does not move the accountability. These stay with a person.

Deciding which emails actually need urgent responses versus what can wait
Reading and responding to all emails - the agent only sorts and summarizes
Updating your VIP contact list when relationships or priorities change
Reviewing and correcting the agent's classifications when it gets things wrong

Once it works.

The first run is the demo. These are where the time actually comes back.

Put it on a schedule

Run this workflow twice daily - morning and after lunch - to catch emails that arrive during your focused work blocks.

Fire it from an event

Set the agent to immediately flag and notify you when emails arrive from your top 5 VIP contacts, regardless of the scheduled summary time.

Run it on a loop

Have the agent learn from your response patterns - if you always respond to certain types of emails within an hour, it can escalate similar future emails to urgent status.

Hand off to another agent

Connect this to your task management system so action items from emails automatically become tasks with proper due dates and context.