A live dashboard that reads your inbox, sorts it by what matters, and drafts every reply before you even look. Connect Gmail or Outlook, build an artifact in Cowork, and prompt it. About ten minutes, three steps.
By Zoe··7 min read
My inbox used to win. I'd open it, see the pile, feel the dread, and close it to deal with "later." Later never came.
So I built an email agent. Not a filter, not a rule. An actual live dashboard that reads my inbox, sorts it by what matters, and writes the replies before I even look. It took about ten minutes and three steps.
Here is exactly how, so you can build your own tonight.
Same inbox, different job. You stop sorting and deciding, you just approve.
1. Connect your email
First, Claude needs to see your inbox. In your connectors, turn on your email. It works with both Gmail and Outlook, so whichever one your life actually runs on.
Turn on Gmail or Outlook in your connectors so Claude can read the real inbox.
One caveat worth knowing: the email connector reads and drafts, it does not send. Everything it writes lands in your drafts folder, so you always get the last look. If you connect Claude in Chrome, it can actually send for you by working in your browser, but I keep it on drafts. I want to hit send myself.
2. Create an artifact in Cowork
An artifact is a live little app Claude builds for you, right inside Cowork. That is what your inbox is about to become. A real dashboard you click around in, not another wall of text.
Open Cowork and start a new artifact. Then you just describe what you want it to do, in plain words. The artifact updates live, so once it exists you never rebuild it, you refresh it.
3. Prompt it to build your dashboard
This is the whole thing. You describe your inbox the way you'd describe it to an assistant on their first day: what matters, what doesn't, and how you sound when you reply.
Here is the exact prompt I used:
Build me a live artifact that acts as an email agent. Pull the emails from my connected inbox and sort them by how important they are to me.
Important: anything about money (invoices, payments, banking), messages from clients or active projects, and anything time-sensitive.
Not important: newsletters, promotions, and automated notifications that don't need a reply.
For every important email, draft a reply in my voice: casual and friendly, the way I'd talk to a colleague, warm but to the point. Show me every email sorted by priority with its draft reply attached. Add a refresh button so I can pull the latest whenever I want.
What comes back is a real dashboard. Your emails sorted by priority, a draft reply sitting under each one, and tabs so you can jump between what matters and what can wait.
The finished artifact: emails sorted by priority, a draft reply under each, tabs for topics, and a refresh button.
Make it smarter
Once the first version works, you shape it. Paste any of these on top and watch the dashboard rebuild itself:
Add tabs across the top: one for each topic (clients, money, school, personal), and one called "hasn't replied" for threads where I'm still waiting on someone.
Let me filter by priority, and hide anything you marked as not important unless I ask to see it.
For each draft, give me two versions: a quick one-liner and a longer, warmer one. Let me edit them right here before I send.
Remember: hit refresh and it pulls in your newest emails and drafts the replies again. The dashboard stays live, so it's ready every morning without you rebuilding a thing.
4. The parts that made mine actually good
The first version works. These are the small additions that turned mine from a nice demo into the thing I open every morning.
The "hasn't replied" tab is the sleeper
Everyone builds the priority view. Almost nobody builds this one, and it is the one that has saved me actual money. It watches threads where you sent the last message and nobody wrote back.
Add a "waiting on" tab: any thread where I sent the last email and haven't gotten a response in more than three days. Show me how many days it's been, and draft a light follow-up nudge for each one.
That is how I caught a proposal that had been sitting unanswered for nine days. I thought the ball was in my court. It wasn't.
Teach it your voice once
The drafts sound like a press release until you show it how you actually write. Give it real samples and it stops guessing.
Here are five emails I've written. Learn how I write: my greeting, my sign-off, how long my sentences run, how formal I get with clients versus my team. Use that voice for every draft from now on.
Tell it what to never touch
An agent that drafts replies to everything is noise. Mine has a hard "do not draft" list, and the inbox got quiet fast.
Never draft replies to newsletters, receipts, calendar notifications, or anything from a no-reply address. Just count them and tell me the number so I can archive them in one go.
Give yourself a morning summary
Before the list, I want the shape of the day in two lines. This sits at the top of my dashboard.
At the top of the dashboard, write me a two-sentence summary: what needs me today, what can wait, and anything that looks urgent or unusual.
What to notice
Describe your inbox like a person, not a program. What matters, what doesn't, how you sound. That is the whole prompt.
Drafts, not sends. It writes, you approve. You never lose the last look.
The artifact is reusable. Build it once, refresh it forever.
Specific tone in, specific replies out. Tell it exactly how you talk and the drafts stop sounding like a robot.
The inbox stopped being the thing I avoided. Now it's ten minutes, and mostly just hitting send.
If you haven't turned on your connectors or handed off your first task yet, start with the day-one setup, then come back and build this.