Chidi Adeyemi

Write Inbox Triage Rules From a Sample of Your Own Email

Paste 15-20 recent sender and subject lines and get triage buckets, filter rules you can set up in Gmail or Outlook, and a short daily inbox routine.

At a glance

Best for: Managers, ops and support leads drowning in mixed email who want filters and rules that fit their actual inbox, not inbox-zero theory.
Tested on: Claude · Opus 5.5
You fill in: roleemail_sample
You get: Buckets Act today (a customer or order is at risk): 1, 8 Approve or answer by a deadline: 3, 4, 11, 15 Know about, no reply: 5, 13, 14 (unless the… (full result below)

productivity

automation

decision-making

Prompt

Design an inbox triage system for me, based on real email rather than generic advice.

My role and what I'm accountable for: {{role}}

A sample of recent emails (sender type and subject only, private details removed): {{email_sample}}

Steps:

1. Classify every email in the sample into 4-5 buckets that fit my role. Name the buckets by the action they need, e.g. "Reply today" or "Read Friday".

1. Automatable rules: filters I can set up in Gmail or Outlook, written as IF (sender, domain or subject keyword) THEN (label, skip inbox, mark read). Only suggest conditions visible in the sample.

1. Judgment rules: 3-4 short rules for the emails a filter can't sort, each one sentence I could stick on a note.

1. Daily routine: a routine of 20 minutes or less, with how many times a day to check and what to do with each bucket.

1. Risk check: list any email in the sample that a filter might wrongly bury, and how to protect it.

Use only what is in the sample. If an email is ambiguous, say which bucket you chose and why.

Fill in

{{role}}: Your job and what you're on the hook for.e.g. Operations lead at a 25-person e-commerce brand
{{email_sample}}: 15-20 recent emails as 'sender type: subject'. Strip names, addresses and anything sensitive.e.g. Shopify: Order #10482 flagged for fraud review; Courier: Delivery exceptions report 22 Sep...

Example input

role: Operations lead at a 25-person DTC home-goods brand. Accountable for fulfillment, suppliers, returns and keeping the warehouse running.

email_sample:
1. Shopify: Order #10482 flagged for fraud review
2. Courier (ShipFast): Daily delivery exceptions report, 22 Sep
3. Supplier (Kiln & Co): Revised PO confirmation, lead time now 6 weeks
4. CEO: "Quick one: Black Friday stock levels?"
5. Warehouse manager: Forklift service booked Thursday
6. SaaS vendor: Your September invoice is ready
7. LinkedIn: 14 people viewed your profile
8. Customer support lead: Escalation, damaged item, 3rd replacement
9. Industry newsletter: Retail logistics weekly #212
10. Courier (ShipFast): Daily delivery exceptions report, 23 Sep
11. Accounting: Please approve supplier payment run by Wed
12. Webinar platform: Reminder: "AI agents for ops" starts in 1 hour
13. Supplier (Packright): New price list effective 1 Nov
14. Google Workspace: Security alert, new sign-in
15. Team member: Holiday request 10-14 Nov

4090

Generated Outputs (1)

3 hours ago

Claude

Opus 5.5

3 hours ago

Generated Output

1. Buckets

• Act today (a customer or order is at risk): 1, 8

• Approve or answer by a deadline: 3, 4, 11, 15

• Know about, no reply: 5, 13, 14 (unless the sign-in wasn't you)

• Review on Friday: 2, 10, 6, 9

• Noise: 7, 12

Ambiguous: #3 (a lead time now 6 weeks) could be "know about", but ahead of Black Friday it changes your stock plan, so I put it in "Approve/answer". #6 is an invoice notice only; accounting handles payment via #11.

2. Automatable rules

• IF sender is ShipFast AND subject contains "delivery exceptions" THEN label "Courier/Exceptions" and skip inbox

• IF sender is LinkedIn THEN skip inbox and mark read

• IF subject contains "Reminder" AND sender is the webinar platform THEN label "Events" and skip inbox

• IF sender is an industry newsletter THEN label "Read Friday" and skip inbox

• IF subject contains "invoice is ready" THEN label "Invoices", keep in inbox but don't star

• IF sender is Shopify AND subject contains "fraud review" THEN star it and keep in inbox

3. Judgment rules

• Anything from a supplier that mentions lead time, price or PO: read it the same day.

• An escalation mentioning a 2nd or 3rd attempt goes to the top, whoever it's from.

• CEO questions get a one-line holding reply within an hour, with the full answer by end of day.

• Approvals with a deadline go on the calendar the moment you read them.

4. Daily routine (about 20 minutes)

• 9:00 (10 min): Act today first, then Approve/answer; put any deadline on the calendar.

• 13:30 (5 min): scan for new Act today items only.

• 16:30 (5 min): clear quick answers; skim the Courier/Exceptions label for any exception count that looks unusual.

• Friday (20 min extra): read the Review bucket and the newsletters.

5. Risk check

• #2 and #10: skipping the inbox hides a bad day, and a courier spike before Black Friday matters. Scan the label daily, or ask ShipFast for an alert threshold.

• #14 security alert: never filter these. Glance at each one to confirm the sign-in was you.

• #13 price list: an automated-looking subject from a supplier, easy to mis-filter. Keep supplier domains out of every skip-inbox rule.

Why it works

Generic inbox advice fails because it isn't built from your mail. Feeding a real sample lets the model propose filters on conditions that actually occur, and "only suggest conditions visible in the sample" stops it inventing rules for email you don't get.

Naming buckets by the action needed ("Approve by deadline") instead of by topic ("Finance") is what makes triage fast. Splitting automatable filters from judgment rules is honest about what a filter can do. The risk check is the step most systems skip: the dangerous filter is the one that quietly buries a supplier lead-time change or a security alert.

When not to use it

Don't paste real customer names, addresses or confidential content; sender type and subject are enough. A 15-email sample misses rare but important senders, so rerun it on a different week before trusting the rules fully. If your company already routes email through a shared inbox or helpdesk, fix the routing there instead.

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