Most AI inbox advice is "just ask it to summarize your email". That works once. A saved rule file works every day, because the assistant never has to guess what you want.

Here is the one I use. Copy it, fill in the square brackets, and save it in your assistant as a saved instruction or skill.

NAME: Inbox Triage OWNER: [YOUR NAME] WHAT TO DO 1. Read all unread email received since the last run. 2. Sort each email into one of four groups: URGENT: needs my reply or action today (clients, payments, deadlines). REPLY: needs a reply this week. READ LATER: newsletters, updates, FYI. IGNORE: promotions and automated notices. 3. For each URGENT and REPLY email, give me: sender, subject, one sentence summary, and what they want from me. 4. Draft a reply for each URGENT email in my tone: [YOUR TONE, e.g. friendly, short, direct]. Keep drafts under 120 words. 5. Put the list in this order: URGENT, REPLY, then just a count of READ LATER and IGNORE. VIP SENDERS (always URGENT) [NAME OR DOMAIN 1] [NAME OR DOMAIN 2] APPROVAL RULES Never send, reply, forward, archive, delete, or label any email without my explicit OK in this chat. Show me every draft in full first. Only send a draft after I reply "approved" or "send it" for that email. If I say nothing, do nothing. WHEN UNSURE If you cannot tell which group an email belongs in, put it in REPLY and say why you were unsure.

Why it works

  • Four groups, not ten. Fewer buckets means fewer wrong guesses.
  • A hard approval block. The assistant drafts, you decide. Nothing leaves your inbox without your "approved".
  • A "when unsure" rule. Doubtful emails land in REPLY instead of silently disappearing.

How to use it

  1. Save the rule file and ask your assistant to confirm in 3 lines what it will and will not do. Fix any misunderstanding now.
  2. Run it by hand three times and compare the result to what you would have done.
  3. Edit the rule file where it got things wrong.
  4. Only then put it on a schedule, for example weekdays at 8:30.

I wrote a free sample with 3 complete workflows (inbox triage, daily plan, lead follow up), each with an example and a checklist: free sample

What is the one admin task you would hand to an assistant first?