Result first
Every weekday at 8:00 you get this:
Today
1. Reply to Dana re: Q3 vendor contract (she asked for a decision by Thu)
2. Approve the expense report from Priya (due today)
3. Confirm the Thursday 14:00 slot with the Henderson team
Everything else: 2 newsletters, 4 FYI threads, 1 calendar notice. Nothing needs you.
No inbox open. If one of the three is wrong, you have lost twenty seconds, not twenty minutes.
The workflow
- Trigger: weekdays at 07:50.
- Read: messages received since the last run, read-only scope, excluding the Spam and Promotions folders where your provider has them.
- Reduce: keep only the latest message per thread; drop messages sent to more than 20 recipients.
- Extract: one model step over all remaining messages, asking for action items in a fixed shape.
- Rank: sort by deadline, then by whether the sender is in your "people" list.
- Deliver: one message at 8:00.
Step by step
1. Scope the connection
Connect your mailbox to the workflow tool with read scope only. The project never sends, archives or labels anything. If the tool insists on a broader scope, stop and pick another tool; the lesson on connecting tools safely explains why.
2. The read step
Filter: received after the last successful run (most tools store this for you; if not, use "last 24 hours" and accept a few repeats on Monday).
Fields you need: sender, recipient count, subject, the latest message body (plain text), thread id.
3. Reduce before you spend tokens
Two filter steps, no model yet:
- Group by thread id, keep the newest message.
- Drop messages whose recipient count is over 20.
This step alone cuts most inboxes by 60 to 80 percent and is the difference between a cheap workflow and an expensive one.
4. The extraction brief
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Map the reduced list into the input. Run it on yesterday's mail and read the JSON. Edit the rules until the false positives are gone; expect three or four edits.
5. Rank
A sort step: deadline ascending, nulls last. Then a second sort key: sender in your "people" list first (a short list of names you maintain in the tool).
Cap at five. Count the rest for the "everything else" line.
6. Deliver
A message step with a fixed template:
Today
{{numbered action items}}
Everything else: {{count}} messages, nothing needs you.
Send to yourself. Turn the schedule on.
Running it safely for a week
- Day 1 to 3: read your inbox as usual, compare with the briefing, fix rules.
- Day 4 to 5: open the inbox only after reading the briefing.
- Week 2: trust it. Keep the "everything else" count visible; a sudden jump means a filter broke.
Cost
With the reduce step, a typical inbox of 60 messages a day sends 15 to 20 to the model, about 8,000 input tokens and 300 output tokens per run. On a mid-range model that is a few cents per day. Without the reduce step it is three to five times more.
Make it yours
- Add a second person list for "always show, whatever the deadline."
- Deliver to a team channel instead, with a per-person section (each person needs their own read connection; do not read someone else's inbox).
- Pair with the Weekly summary workflow from the beginner path for a Friday look-ahead.
Where it usually breaks
- 01Newsletters with "action required" in the subject get ranked as tasks. Add a sender allow-list or a rule: "Ignore messages sent to more than 20 recipients."
- 02Long threads make the model summarize the whole history. Pass only the latest message of each thread.
- 03The 8:00 run finds nothing new on Mondays because the window is 24 hours. Use "since last run" or 72 hours on Mondays.
- 04A token expires after a few weeks. Add the one-alert pattern so you hear about it the same morning.
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