Template

Inbox Triage Agent

Reads your inbox. Classifies every message. Drafts replies in your voice. Never sends without your approval.

Deploy this template See it working

Works with Gmail and Outlook · Free plan · BYOK · Runs 24/7

Inbox Triage
Connected to Gmail · runs hourly
Processing 4 processed
SC
Sarah ChenAcme Corp
Contract renewal deadline Friday
URGENT
DT
Dev team#eng
Can we push Friday's deploy to Monday?
NEEDS REPLY
recruiter@linkedin.com
Interview request for senior engineer role
NEEDS REPLY
Stripe
September invoice, $487.00
FYI · ARCHIVED
3 drafts ready · waiting for your approval
Review now
4
classified
3
drafts ready
1
archived
0
sent unapproved

Plugs into

GmailOutlookSlackTelegram
Every message, one lane

Four lanes. Every message sorted.

The agent drops each new message into a lane and takes the action you set for it.

URGENT
Escalated

Flagged to Slack or Telegram the moment it lands.

NEEDS REPLY
Drafted

A reply in your voice, waiting for your approval.

FYI
Archived

Receipts, newsletters and notifications, sorted and listed.

SPAM
Kept out

Classified as spam and kept out of your way.

Capabilities

What your inbox triage agent does

Reads and classifies

Connects to your Gmail or Outlook inbox. Checks for new messages on the interval you set. Classifies each message: urgent, needs reply, FYI, or spam.

Drafts replies

Generates a first-draft response in your writing style, using context from the thread. You review it, edit if needed, and approve. The agent learns your tone over time.

Monday works, I'll update the calendar.

Escalates what matters

Urgent messages get flagged immediately to your Slack or Telegram. You decide what counts as urgent: sender, subject keywords, or the agent's own assessment.

urgentTelegram

Archives the noise

Newsletters, receipts, notifications, and automated messages get sorted without your involvement. You set the rules once.

NewslettersReceiptsNotifications
The output

Here is what your agent sends you every morning

One message in Slack, Telegram or email. Every new message classified, every draft one click from sent, everything routine already out of the way.

  • Specific names, amounts and deadlines pulled from the thread
  • Drafts shown inline so you can approve without opening Gmail
  • Archived items listed, so nothing disappears silently
#inbox-triage 2
Inbox TriageAGENTMonday, 9:03 AM

4 new messages processed since last check (8:00 AM):

  1. 1.
    URGENTSarah Chen (Acme Corp)
    Contract renewal deadline Friday
    →Draft reply ready for your approval→Escalated to #urgent in Slack
  2. 2.
    NEEDS REPLYDev team
    Can we push Friday's deploy to Monday?
    "Monday works, I'll update the calendar. Anything blocking in the meantime?"
    →Waiting for your approval
  3. 3.
    NEEDS REPLYrecruiter@linkedin.com
    Interview request for senior engineer role
    →Draft reply ready for your approval
  4. 4.
    FYIStripe
    September invoice, $487.00
    →Archived automatically
3 drafts waiting for approvalReview now
How it works

How the triage agent works

AThe schedule

Heartbeat, not uptime

Your agent runs on a heartbeat schedule: every 30 minutes, every hour, or every morning at 7am. It checks for new messages, processes them, and stands down until the next check. You are not paying for the hours it spends idle. Credits meter the work, not the uptime.

7am12pm5pm10pm
Working · meteredIdle · free
BThe approval gate

You control the pace

Every agent starts at Intern trust level: it reads and drafts, you approve everything. When you are confident in its accuracy, promote it to Specialist. It handles routine replies on its own and only asks about edge cases.

Inbox Triage drafted a reply to Acme Corp
Wants to send via Gmail · waiting for you
Approve & sendReject
CThe skills it uses

Four verified skills

Each skill is security-verified and pre-wired into the template. Swap Gmail for Outlook or Slack for Telegram without touching anything else.

Gmail connector
or Outlook connector
Classification skill
rules you define or the agent learns
Slack / Telegram connector
for escalation
Drafting skill
tone matching from your past replies
Setup

Live in three steps

M

Setting up inbox triage for Gmail

  1. 1

    Deploy the Inbox Triage template from the BetterClaw dashboard

  2. 2

    Connect your Gmail account via OAuth (one click, standard Google auth)

  3. 3

    Set your triage rules: what counts as urgent, which senders to prioritise, what to auto-archive

Setup takes about 90 seconds. The agent's first triage run happens within minutes.
O

Setting up inbox triage for Outlook

  1. 1

    Deploy the Inbox Triage template from the BetterClaw dashboard

  2. 2

    Connect your Outlook account with the Outlook connector via Microsoft OAuth

  3. 3

    Set your triage rules: what counts as urgent, which senders to prioritise, what to auto-archive

If your organisation uses Microsoft 365, the Outlook connector handles shared mailboxes too. One agent can triage the team inbox and route messages to the right person.

Cost

What inbox triage costs

The agent consumes approximately 2,000–3,000 tokens per triage run on Claude Sonnet 5 ($2/$10 per million tokens). Model cost is separate and billed by your provider directly. BYOK, zero markup.

Platform: free plan (100 credits/month) covers about 3 runs per dayPro ($49/month, 12,000 credits) covers hourly triage on multiple inboxes. See pricing
How often should it run?
Per run
~$0.01–0.03
Model cost / month
~$0.90–2.70
Platform plan
Free · $0/month
~90 runs/month · 100 credits

Estimates based on the template's average token usage. Actual cost depends on inbox volume and thread length.

Build vs deploy

Email triage agent: BetterClaw vs building in n8n

Building it in n8n

2–4 hours

You can build an email triage workflow in n8n. It takes about 35–50 nodes (Gmail trigger, classifier, conditional branches for each category, a drafting node, a notification node, error handling). Setup is 2–4 hours if you know n8n, plus a VPS to run it on.

35–50 nodes + VPS + maintenance

Deploying on BetterClaw

90 seconds

On BetterClaw, deploy the template, connect Gmail, set your rules. 90 seconds. No VPS, no nodes, no maintenance. The AI agent builder handles hosting, scheduling and secrets.

DeployConnectRules
3 steps, nothing to host

Both work. The question is whether the 2–4 hours of setup and the ongoing maintenance are worth it for your use case.

Compare

How this compares to SaneBox, Copilot and other email tools

Sorts and prioritises

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
Yes
Copilot in Outlook
Yes
Shortwave
Yes

Drafts replies

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
No
Copilot in Outlook
Yes
Shortwave
Yes

Approval before sending

BetterClaw Triage
Yes (trust levels)
SaneBox
N/A
Copilot in Outlook
No (sends or doesn't)
Shortwave
No

Escalates to Slack/Telegram

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
No
Copilot in Outlook
No
Shortwave
No

Works with Gmail

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
Yes
Copilot in Outlook
No
Shortwave
Yes

Works with Outlook

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
Yes
Copilot in Outlook
Yes
Shortwave
No

Runs on a schedule 24/7

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
Yes
Copilot in Outlook
Yes
Shortwave
Yes

BYOK (bring your own model)

BetterClaw Triage
Yes
SaneBox
N/A
Copilot in Outlook
No (GPT only)
Shortwave
No

Free tier

BetterClaw Triage
Yes (100 credits)
SaneBox
No
Copilot in Outlook
Included in M365
Shortwave
No

Email Triage Agent: Common Questions

What is email triage?

Email triage is the process of reading, classifying, and prioritising incoming messages so you deal with urgent ones first, routine ones on schedule, and noise not at all. An AI triage agent does this automatically.

Can an AI agent send emails on my behalf?

Yes, but this template drafts by default and waits for your approval before sending. You can promote the agent to Specialist trust level to auto-send routine replies, but you choose when.

Can Copilot in Outlook do this?

Copilot drafts replies but does not classify, prioritise, escalate to Slack, or run on a schedule with approval gates. It is a writing assistant, not an autonomous triage agent.

How do I triage emails automatically in Gmail?

Deploy the Inbox Triage template on BetterClaw, connect your Gmail via OAuth, and set your triage rules. The agent checks your inbox on the schedule you set and classifies every new message.

Is there a free AI email triage tool?

BetterClaw's free plan includes 1 agent and 100 credits per month. Pair it with a free LLM key (Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter) for $0/month total.

What is the best AI agent for organising my inbox?

It depends on what you need. For sorting only, SaneBox works. For sorting plus drafting with approval controls and multi-channel escalation, BetterClaw's Inbox Triage template covers it. For Outlook-only environments, Copilot is built in but less configurable.

Deploy the Inbox Triage template now

Deploy this template

Free plan · 100 credits/month · Gmail and Outlook · BYOK