Monday morning, 80 unread, first meeting in 25 minutes. Instead of reading top-to-bottom and panic-replying, you paste the inbox into Claude, get back a ranked action list — reply now / today / this week / ignore — with one-line draft replies for the urgent ones. You triage decisions, not emails.
Who this is for
Anyone who starts the week underwater in email and wants to walk into the first meeting already knowing what actually needs them — versus what just feels loud.
What you'll need
- Gmail (or any inbox you can copy from).
- A Claude account. Keep AI on triage and drafting — you stay the one who hits send.
Grab the raw inbox · 5 min
You don't need every word — sender, subject, and the first line or two is enough to triage. In Gmail, skim your unread and copy the sender + subject lines into a doc. If a thread is clearly important, paste its latest message too.
Don't read to decide yet. Just collect.
Rank by what needs you · 8 min
Paste it into Claude and let it sort:
Here's my Monday inbox — senders, subjects, and snippets. Triage it for me. Sort every item into exactly one bucket: - REPLY NOW — time-sensitive and needs my decision before my first meeting - TODAY — matters, but can wait until after standup - THIS WEEK — real, not urgent; give it a suggested day - ARCHIVE — FYI, newsletters, or threads that resolved themselves Rules: - I'm a [role]. Weigh things by impact on my actual priorities, not by who shouted loudest. - For each REPLY NOW item, add a one-line note on what the reply needs to accomplish. - Call out anything that looks like it's secretly blocking someone else. Here's the inbox: [paste]
Draft the urgent replies · 5 min
For the REPLY NOW pile, ask Claude to draft short, send-ready replies in your voice:
Draft replies for the REPLY NOW items above. For each: - Keep it under 4 sentences. Warm but brisk. - Make the decision or next step explicit — no "let me get back to you" unless that's genuinely the move. - Match my style: [paste 2–3 sentences of how you actually write]. Give me each draft labeled with the thread so I can paste and send.
Skim each draft, fix anything that isn't you, send. Archive the ARCHIVE pile in one sweep.
Letting AI auto-send. Triage and draft, yes. Send, never — one hallucinated commitment in a client thread isn't worth the saved minute.
Pasting whole threads for everything. It buries the signal and burns your time. Snippets are enough to rank; only paste full text for the few that need a real reply.
Re-litigating the buckets. The point is momentum. If something's in THIS WEEK, trust it and move on — you'll see it again on its suggested day.
Do this next
- Block the THIS WEEK items straight onto your calendar so they don't silently rot.
- Turn it into a Friday ritual too — see Clear Your Inbox to Zero Every Friday.
- Notice your repeat senders. If the same person generates REPLY NOW every week, the fix is a process change, not faster triage.