Inbox zero with AI
Triage, summarize and draft replies to a pile of emails in minutes — not the whole morning. Paste one prompt, dump your inbox, and get back a ranked action list with replies already written.
Your inbox is a to-do list other people wrote
You open your mail and 40 threads are staring back. Some are urgent, most aren't, and you can't tell which until you've read all of them. So you skim, you procrastinate, and the two emails that actually mattered get buried under newsletters and "just checking in." The reading isn't the hard part — the deciding is. That's exactly the part AI is good at.
Without AI
Read every email top to bottom, hold priorities in your head, forget the third one, write four replies from scratch, and still feel behind by 9:15am.
With the prompt below
Paste the whole pile once. Get a ranked list — reply now, today, or ignore — a one-line summary of each, and ready-to-send drafts for the ones that need you.
Copy this. It does the whole triage.
Fill in the [brackets] once with your own details, then reuse it every morning. Paste it into a fresh chat, then paste your emails right after it.
You are my executive assistant. I'm going to paste a batch of emails from my inbox below. Process the entire batch and help me hit inbox zero fast. ABOUT ME (so your drafts sound like me): - My name: [YOUR NAME] - My role / company: [e.g. Operations lead at a 12-person agency] - My tone in email: [e.g. warm but brief, no corporate fluff, first-name basis] - My hard rules: never commit to dates without checking my calendar; never share pricing below [X]; escalate anything legal or financial to me. DO THIS, IN THIS ORDER: 1) TRIAGE — sort every email into exactly one bucket: • 🔴 REPLY NOW — time-sensitive, from someone who matters, or blocking someone. • 🟡 TODAY — needs a reply but not urgent. • 🟢 FYI / ARCHIVE — no reply needed; read-and-forget or newsletters. For each, give me: sender · a 1-line summary · WHY you ranked it there. 2) SURFACE THE LANDMINES — flag anything that: asks for money or a commitment, has a real deadline, sounds unhappy/at-risk, or looks like phishing. List these separately so I can't miss them. 3) DRAFT THE REPLIES — for every 🔴 and 🟡 email, write a ready-to-send reply in MY tone: • Keep it short. Get to the point in the first line. • If information is missing, leave a clearly marked [PLACEHOLDER] instead of inventing facts. • Never invent dates, numbers, names, or commitments I didn't give you. • Offer 2 versions (a fast one-liner and a fuller one) only when the email is important. 4) MY 3-MINUTE ACTION LIST — end with a numbered list of what I personally need to do that no reply can handle (a call to make, a decision, a doc to send). RULES: - Do not fabricate anything. If you're unsure of a fact, ask me or mark it [PLACEHOLDER]. - Be decisive in your ranking — I want fewer 🔴s, not more. - Keep the whole output skimmable. I should be able to clear my inbox from your summary alone. Ready? Here are the emails: [PASTE YOUR EMAILS HERE — subject lines and bodies, one after another]
Pro tip: to paste a whole inbox fast, in Gmail open a thread → ⋮ menu → "Forward all" gives you the full text, or just copy-paste each email's subject + body. You never need to give the AI your password or account access — it only reads what you paste.
3 steps to a clear inbox
Personalize it once
Replace the [YOUR NAME], role, tone and hard-rules lines with your own. Save that filled-in version somewhere — you'll paste the same prompt every day, so you only do this once.
Dump your inbox in
Open a fresh chat, paste the prompt, then paste your emails right where it says [PASTE YOUR EMAILS HERE]. Subject line + body for each is plenty — 10, 20, 40 at a time, it doesn't care.
Skim, tweak, send
Read the ranked list top to bottom. Fill any [PLACEHOLDER] the AI left, tighten a sentence if you want, then copy each draft into your reply and hit send. Whole inbox, cleared, in one pass.
One clean, decision-ready rundown
Instead of 40 open threads, you get a single output you can act on in minutes — ranked, summarized, and with the replies already written. Here's the shape of it:
- ✓A ranked triage list — every email sorted into Reply Now / Today / FYI, each with a one-line summary and the reason it landed there.
- ✓A landmine flag — deadlines, money asks, unhappy clients and likely phishing pulled out separately so nothing slips.
- ✓Ready-to-send drafts — written in your voice, short, with clearly marked
[PLACEHOLDER]s instead of invented facts. - ✓A 3-minute action list — the handful of things only you can do, so you close the laptop knowing exactly what's left.
Priya — "Invoice #2231 overdue, pausing our project"
Paying client is unhappy and threatening to stop work. Money + at-risk relationship = top of the pile.
Sam (ops) — "Need sign-off before 2pm to ship"
You're the blocker on a hard deadline. One-line yes/no unblocks the team.
Recruiter — "Quick call this week?"
Worth a reply but not urgent. Suggest a slot without committing your calendar.
SaaS Weekly · 3 newsletters · "Team offsite photos"
No reply needed. Archive and move on.
Hi Priya — you're right, and I'm sorry it slipped. Invoice #2231 is going out to finance today and I'll confirm the moment it's paid. Please don't pause anything on our account — I'd rather fix this than lose the momentum we've built.
Can I call you at [TIME] to walk through it directly?
ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini — take your pick
This is the free, do-it-yourself way
JARVIS does this for you — automatically. Instead of copy-pasting your inbox every morning, it's wired to your real data: it reads new mail as it lands, triages on its own, drafts in your voice, and hands you a briefing before you sit down. The prompt above is the manual version of one thing JARVIS does on autopilot.