Inbox Triage That Runs Without You
Build the rules, labels, and draft replies for a self-managing inbox.
Inbox zero is a technique for people with a manageable inbox. Everyone else needs the inbox to sort itself before they open it.
That is the gap this drop closes. It is a operations skill built for Gemini, and it takes about ten minutes to set up the first time. After that it runs in under a minute.
Who should use it
Founders and managers at 200+ emails a day.
How it works
The skill file does five things, in this order.
1. Audit a week of mail. By what you did with it, not by sender.
2. Define five buckets only. More than five and you will stop using the system.
3. Write the filter conditions. Exact Gmail search syntax, ready to paste.
4. Draft the standard replies. For the three categories that are always the same answer.
5. Set the review rhythm. Which buckets get read daily and which weekly.
What comes back
Gmail filter syntax, five labels, standard reply drafts, and a review schedule.
The mistake to avoid
Categorise by the action required, never by the sender or topic. 'Needs a decision from me' is a useful label; 'Suppliers' is a folder you will never open.
Running it
Save the prompt as a Gem so it is reusable, or paste it into Gemini with your files attached. If the task touches Sheets, Docs or Gmail, run it from the Workspace side panel so it can read the file you already have open.
Where this fits
On its own, one skill saves an hour a week. The compounding happens when three or four of them run in sequence on the same input, the same transcript that produces a scope of work also produces the follow-up email and the project brief. That is the point at which it stops being a prompt and starts being an internal tool. If you want that wired into the systems your team already uses, that is the work 67 Digital does.
In the file
Design an inbox triage system from this week of email.
1. ACTION AUDIT, categorise every email by what I actually did: replied within
an hour, replied later, forwarded, archived unread, still sitting there.
Report the share of each.
2. FIVE BUCKETS, define exactly five labels based on required action, not
sender or topic. Name them as verbs or states, e.g. "Needs my decision".
3. FILTERS, for each bucket, the exact Gmail search syntax to route mail into
it. Include the false positives each filter will catch and how to narrow it.
4. STANDARD REPLIES, for any category where my answer was substantially the
same three or more times, draft the reply with variables.
5. REVIEW RHYTHM, which buckets I read daily, which weekly, which never.
<email_sample>{paste subjects, senders, and what you did with each}</email_sample>