Automated email triage with Gmail, GPT-4o, and Slack urgency notifications

Hourly Email Summary: This agent scans your inbox every 4 hour and summarizes new emails into a clean, actionable Slack message. Powered by GPT-4, it classifies emails by Urgency (High, Medium, Low) and Intent (Awaiting Reply, To Respond, Comment, Notification, Marketing). No more inbox FOMO — just what you need to act fast.

Main Use Cases: • Stay on top of important threads without refreshing your inbox constantly • Prioritize tasks and replies based on urgency and context • Catch missed follow-ups by surfacing emails that need a response • Filter out noise like marketing emails or low-priority notifications • Enable async decision-making by keeping the team updated on critical emails via Slack • Reduce cognitive load by letting AI handle sorting and triaging ⸻

✅ Steps to Use

1. Connect Your Accounts: Add your Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets, and OpenAI credentials inside n8n.
2. Create Gmail Labels (Required): Go to your Gmail settings and create labels matching the following format: AI Agent/To Respond, AI Agent/Awaiting Reply, AI Agent/Notification, AI Agent/Marketing, etc. These are used by the workflow to auto-tag emails based on intent.
3. Create a Google Sheet with 2 Tabs • Name the sheet something like “N8N - Emails”. • Add two sheets/tabs inside: • Sheet1 → stores all processed emails • Sheet2 → stores only the latest batch for digest view • In both sheets, add these columns (first row): From | Summary | Intent | Category | TimeStamp | Urgency
4. Import the Workflow: Upload or paste the .json file into your n8n instance. Make sure each node is linked to your active credentials.
5. Configure Slack Channel: In the Slack node, select the channel where you want urgent alerts and digest summaries to be posted.
6. Adjust Schedule (Optional): Default: runs every hour. You can tweak this to suit your preference (e.g., every 30 min or 2 hours).
7. Run a Test: Execute manually once to check: • Emails are getting processed • Labels are added correctly in Gmail • Slack notifications are triggered • Data is logged in Google Sheets
8. Turn It On • Once everything looks good, activate the workflow. • Your inbox will now be triaged in real-time — sorted, labeled, summarized.

Step-by-Step Breakdown:

1. ⏰ Schedule Trigger: Runs every hour to kick off the workflow automatically.
2. 📩 Fetch Emails & Labels • Pulls all Gmail messages received in the last 4 hours. • Also fetches Gmail labels to use for tagging messages based on intent.
3. 🤖 Analyze with GPT-4 • Each email is analyzed using GPT-4. • Output includes: • Summary • Urgency: High, Medium, Low • Intent: To Respond, Awaiting Reply, Marketing, Notification, etc. • Category: Customer, Investor, Spam, etc.
4. Classify and Label • Emails are tagged with the right intent label inside Gmail. 5.🚨 Slack Alerts for High Urgency • If an email is marked High Urgency, it sends an alert to a designated Slack channel with all key details.
5. 📊 Google Sheets Logging • All emails are logged to two Google Sheets: • Sheet1: All messages, for long-term record. • Sheet2: Temporary sheet to collect latest batch for digest.
6. ⏳ Wait + Digest Preparation • After logging, the workflow waits 30 seconds. • It then fetches recent entries from Sheet2, filters out older messages, and groups them by Medium and Low urgency.
7. 📬 Slack Digest Summary • A clean digest is posted on Slack showing only the Medium and Low urgency messages from the past hour — helping you catch up without inbox overload.

Uses a System Prompt to define its role as an AI Chief of Staff.

Uses a User Prompt that instructs GPT-4 to analyze each email and return a structured JSON with the following: • summary – One-line summary of the email • urgency – High / Medium / Low • category – Investor, Customer, Support, Spam, Other • Intent – One of: • To Respond: Needs your reply • Awaiting Reply: You’re waiting for a response • Notification: Auto-updates from tools or services • Meeting Update: Calendar or schedule changes • Marketing: Promotional or cold emails • FYI: Informational emails that don’t need action

The output is clean JSON with built-in guardrails to avoid hallucinations or irrelevant content. Only real message data is used for summaries and classification.

Sections with no relevant data are omitted to keep it concise.

🧩 What’s Next

This agent already cuts through inbox noise and gives you clarity — but there’s more you can build on top:

💡 Suggestions to Improve: • Train on your past threads to make prioritization even smarter • Allow custom rules per sender or domain (e.g. always mark investor emails as High) • Add emoji tags or reactions in Slack to quickly mark emails as done or follow-up • Support voice summary via Slack audio snippet or Loom integration

🚀 Next Features You Could Add: • Reply-from-Slack: One-click smart reply suggestions that can be sent right from Slack • Cross-inbox support: Add Outlook or multiple Gmail accounts • Weekend Digest: A weekly email or Slack drop with trends (top senders, most flagged categories) • Daily Timeline View: Generate a Notion page that logs the day’s most critical communication