Email Triage Automation | Field Notes

40+ emails every morning. Half an hour gone before real work starts. Every single day.

Now my agent handles it. Twice daily, it scans, categorizes, archives the noise, and leaves me with only what matters. Inbox time went from 30 minutes to 5.

How It Works

Two scans per day — morning and afternoon. Each one does three things:

Categorizes by urgency — respond today, this week, or never
Auto-archives noise — newsletters, notifications, and promos get filed instantly
Flags action items — one-line summaries like "Client X asking about timeline (respond today)"

Email Access Setup

Store IMAP credentials in your workspace secrets:

# In your secrets folder
email-imap.json:
{
  "host": "imap.yourprovider.com",
  "user": "you@example.com",
  "password": "app-specific-password"
}

Always use an app-specific password — revoke access anytime without changing your real login.

Categorization Tiers

Urgent — direct messages from known contacts, deadline language
This week — invoices, scheduling, non-urgent questions
FYI only — newsletters worth reading later
Auto-archive — marketing, notifications, low-priority senders

It doesn't need to be perfect. 90% accuracy still saves you from manually sorting hundreds of emails per week.

Flagged vs Filed

Simple rule: if it requires action, it gets flagged with a summary. If it's just information, it gets filed.

Newsletters → "Read Later" folder
Receipts → "Finance" folder
Notifications → archived (searchable but invisible)

What's left each morning? 3-5 emails that actually need me, each with a one-liner explaining what's needed.

The Real Win

Time savings are nice. The mental relief is bigger. No more low-grade anxiety about what's buried in there. If it's important, it surfaces. If not, it wasn't.

Start simple: one scan per day, three categories. Refine over a week. Custom triage system within a month.