AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 8 min read
Most people who connect Gmail to Claude ask it to "summarise my inbox" and get back a tidy list of every newsletter, receipt and calendar ping from the last day. It reads like progress. It is a second inbox in Claude's prose, and you still have to decide what matters.
The rule: give Claude a job with a filter, not an inbox to describe. Each prompt below tells it what to ignore, what counts as "needs you", and what shape the answer must take.
All three use the same Gmail connector. Anthropic's help centre says the Google Workspace connectors (Gmail, Calendar, Drive) are available on all plans, Free included. At time of writing Anthropic lists Pro at US$20 a month (US$17 a month billed annually) and Team at US$25 a seat a month (US$20 annually), in dollars, so check the £ figure at checkout.
| Prompt | What it does | Cost | Best for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Morning Sweep | Pulls the last 24 hours, drops automated mail, returns only what needs action today, most urgent first | Any plan with the Gmail connector | A daily five-minute start | Only as good as its ignore list. A real email from a no-reply address can get filtered |
| The Ask Finder | Reads long threads to the end and lists every request, question and deadline aimed at you, including on cc | Same | Weeks with busy group threads | Long threads eat usage allowance. Misses asks inside attachments |
| The Voice Draft | Studies your sent mail, summarises how you write, then drafts one reply in that style | Same | Replies you've been putting off | Fifteen emails is a small sample. Read every draft |
On Team and Enterprise plans, Gmail won't appear until an Owner or Primary Owner enables it under Organization settings > Connectors. If you see "Access blocked: your institution's admin needs to review Claude for Google Drive", your Google Workspace admin has to mark Claude as a trusted app first.
Two limits: Claude sees attachment metadata, not what's inside, and some advanced Gmail filters may not work.
Run it before you open Gmail, so its answer is the first thing you read.
You are my inbox triage assistant. Your job is to save me from reading every email by showing me only what needs my action today.
Context: I work as [YOUR_ROLE]. Emails from [KEY_PEOPLE_OR_DOMAINS] always matter.
Steps:
1. Search my Gmail for messages received in the last 24 hours (for example newer_than:1d).
2. Set aside newsletters, promotions, receipts, order updates, social notifications and anything sent automatically. Do not set aside an automated-looking email if it comes from someone on my key list.
3. From what remains, keep only emails where I must reply, decide, approve, pay, attend or send something today.
4. Rank them by urgency: hard deadlines today first, then senders on my key list, then the rest.
Output: a table with columns Sender | What they need from me | Deadline (write "none stated" if there isn't one) | Suggested next move (one line). Below the table, one line saying how many emails you set aside as non-urgent.
Rules: do not invent deadlines or infer them from tone. Quote the sender's words if the ask is ambiguous. Do not reply to, label, archive or send anything. If nothing needs me today, say exactly that in one sentence.
If my role or key people are missing, ask me before you search.
Before you answer, check: is every row something I genuinely have to act on today, and does each deadline appear in the email itself?
Fill in your role and the people or domains that always matter.
Requests often turn up as the fifth reply in a thread you were cc'd on, phrased as "could someone pick this up?". This prompt goes looking for them.
You are reviewing my email threads to find work that has quietly been handed to me.
Context: my name is [YOUR_NAME], people may also call me [NICKNAMES_OR_TEAM_NAME], and my email address is [YOUR_EMAIL].
Steps:
1. Look through Gmail threads active in the past [NUMBER_OF_DAYS] days that contain four or more messages, including ones where I'm only on cc.
2. Read each thread through to the latest message, not just the first one.
3. Pick out every request, question or deadline that is aimed at me. Include ones addressed to a group I belong to, and replies like "can you take this?" sent straight after a message of mine.
4. Also flag anything where someone says they're waiting on me or expects me to come back to them.
5. Drop items that a later message in the same thread shows are done or reassigned.
Output: a to-do list sorted by deadline, each item as: Task | Who asked | Date asked | Deadline ("none stated" if absent) | Thread subject. Put anything you're unsure was meant for me in a separate "Check these" list, with the sentence that made you think so.
Rules: do not reply to or change any email. Do not guess deadlines. If a thread is too long to read in full, name it rather than skimming.
If I haven't given my name or a time window, ask before searching.
Before answering, check that every task names a real person who asked and links to a thread subject I can search for.
Fill in your name, what colleagues call you, your address and how many days back to look. Fourteen is a sensible start.
Claude's default email voice is polite and slightly too long. This prompt makes it study your sent mail first.
You are drafting an email reply in my own writing style. A good result is one I could send after light edits, with nothing that sounds like a template.
Steps:
1. Search my sent mail (from:me) from the last three months and pick 15 messages I wrote myself to people, skipping one-line replies, forwards and calendar responses.
2. Study how I write: greetings, sign-offs, sentence length, directness, phrases I reuse and things I avoid.
3. Give me five bullet points describing my style, each with a short example from my own emails.
4. Then draft a reply to [THE_EMAIL_OR_THREAD_SUBJECT] that says [WHAT_I_WANT_TO_SAY]. Match the style you described. Keep it about as long as my usual emails to this person.
Output: the five bullets, then the draft in a plain text block.
Rules: show me the draft in this chat only. Do not send it, reply, forward or save it anywhere unless I ask in a follow-up. Do not add promises, dates or figures I didn't give you. If what I want to say is unclear, ask me one question first.
Before answering, check the draft against your five bullets and remove any phrase that appears in none of my sample emails and sounds generic.
Fill in which email you're replying to (paste it, or give the subject line) and the substance of your answer in a sentence or two.
Once the style bullets look right, paste them into the instructions of a Claude project you use for email. After that you only need step 4.
On paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise), Claude Cowork can run scheduled tasks: select Scheduled, then New task, and set a prompt and a frequency such as daily or weekdays. Anthropic says these can use connected tools including Gmail and run remotely while your computer is asleep. Put the Morning Sweep in a weekday task and it's waiting when you start. Keep it read-only: a job that can send email while you sleep has nothing to gain.