in this session, you will learn how to run email triage once in Claude, then have Claude write a recurring task prompt for your inbox. You will end up with a daily cleanup workflow based on your real rules, not a generic prompt.
Step-by-step:
- Open Claude with Gmail access and run one triage session on your unread inbox. The goal is to show Claude what matters before automating the process
- Prompt: āGenerate an interactive email triage report for the last 24 hours. Sort each email into exactly one of these buckets: Needs response, Needs attention, Archive, Archive and unsubscribe. For each email, include the sender, subject, a one-line reason for the category, a direct link to the email, and the item number. Add labels to the approved emailsā
- Review, correct misfires, and prompt: Turn this workflow into a recurring task prompt for my inbox, with my common senders, archive, and unsubscribe rules
- Save that prompt as a Claude Cowork scheduled task so it can run every morning without rebuilding the logic
Pro tip: Set up Gmail rules around the labels Claude adds. It can apply labels through the connector, so āNeeds Responseā and āNeeds Attentionā can be auto-starred, and Archive emails can be auto-archived.