Most mornings the inbox is not a to-do list. It is a pile of other people's agendas mixed in with two or three things that actually need your attention. Your assistant separates the signal from the noise before the 9 AM standup, so you open your laptop to a clean list of decisions rather than 87 unread emails.
The prompt
Runs at 8:30 AM every weekday. Copy it and swap in your own labels and channels.
Morning triage. Go through everything that hit my Gmail and Slack since yesterday at 5 PM.
Gmail — sort into four buckets:
- Archive: newsletters, automations, anything that doesn't need me
- Label Waiting: things where I'm waiting on someone else
- Draft: anything I can reply to in 2 minutes — write the draft
- Decision: things only I can decide — pull these out
Slack — check my DMs and @mentions. Flag anything still waiting on me.
Send me a summary here:
- How many emails processed and how many remain
- Slack threads that need a reply
- The full decision list, one line of context per itemHow it works
Your assistant connects to Gmail via the Google API and reads every email received since the previous day at 5 PM. It classifies each one using a four-bucket system: noise (archive), delegated (label and archive), quick reply (draft), or decision (surface). The classification takes about 40 seconds for a typical overnight inbox of 60 to 80 emails.
In parallel it scans Slack DMs and channels where you are @mentioned. Anything that still needs a reply gets flagged. Then it compiles the decision list and sends it to your Slack DM as a single formatted message before the standup.
What the output looks like
You get a single Slack message with three sections. Processed: 74 emails, 3 remain. Slack: 2 threads need a reply. Decisions needed: a contract renewal from a vendor (deadline Friday), a message from Ash (Akash's assistant) asking about the Q2 roadmap priority on his behalf, and a press inquiry that needs a response or a no.
The outcome
Inbox triage used to take 47 minutes of scattered attention through the morning. Now it takes 90 seconds to read the summary and act on what matters. You enter every standup knowing exactly what is on your plate and nothing is falling through the cracks in the pile you did not get to.