Setting Up Your Email Triage System with Claude Cowork

You can build a Claude Cowork automation that sorts your inbox into categories, flags anything from your VIP list straight to Slack, files unrecognized emails into an "Other" folder for manual review, and sends you a weekly summary — without you touching your inbox.

What do I need before I start?

Step 1: How do I connect email and Slack?

1. Open Claude Cowork (desktop app, or web/mobile beta).
2. Click Customize in the left sidebar, then Connectors.
3. Click +, find Gmail (or Microsoft 365), click Connect, and authorize in your browser.
4. Repeat for Slack.
5. Once both show as Connected, they're available to any Cowork task.

Approval mode: By default, Claude asks for your approval before it sends, replies to, or forwards an email. Labeling and filing is usually safe to let run automatically.

Step 2: How do I plan my triage rules?

Decide on paper what should happen to each kind of email. This is the step most people rush — don't.

• Categories: for each one, the category name, the folder/label it moves to, and its trigger (a sender, a domain, or words in the subject/body).
• VIP list: senders or domains that get labeled VIP and trigger an immediate Slack alert, plus the Slack channel to use.
• Catch-all: anything that doesn't match goes to a folder called "Other" so nothing silently disappears.
• Frequency: hourly, once a day at a set time, or weekdays only.

Step 3: How do I build the scheduled task?

1. In Cowork, click Scheduled in the left sidebar.
2. Click New task, then Create with Claude.
3. Paste this prompt with your Step 2 details:

Set up a recurring scheduled task that triages my email inbox.

Each time it runs, it should:
1. Look only at emails currently in my inbox that are NOT already labeled/filed into one of my categories below (skip anything already sorted).
2. Apply these category rules, in order, and move/label matching emails accordingly:
 - "[Category 1]": [trigger, e.g. sender contains "billing@" OR subject contains "invoice"] -> label "[Folder 1]"
 - "[Category 2]": [trigger] -> label "[Folder 2]"
 - [add more categories from your worksheet]
3. Check my VIP list: [paste VIP names/emails/domains]. If an email is from anyone on this list, label it "VIP" AND immediately send a Slack message to #[channel-name] saying "VIP email from [sender] — subject: [subject] — needs immediate attention," with a link to the message if possible.
4. Anything left over that doesn't match a category or the VIP list goes into a label/folder called "Other" for me to review by hand.
5. Run this every [hourly / day at 8am / weekday morning] — ask me if you need me to pick from the schedule options.

Ask me any clarifying questions before you finalize the schedule.

Answer Claude's clarifying questions, review the summary, and click Schedule.

Tip: Let labeling and filing run automatically, but keep approval required for anything that looks like Claude speaking on your behalf, such as replying or forwarding.

Step 4: How do I test it before I trust it?

1. Send yourself a test email that should match your VIP rule.
2. On the Scheduled tasks page, click your task and select Run now.
3. Confirm the test email was labeled VIP, the Slack alert arrived in the right channel, and everything else landed where you expected.
4. If something's off, edit the prompt directly — no need to rebuild.

Step 5 (Bonus): How do I add a weekly report?

Set up a weekly recurring scheduled task, run every [day/time], that:
1. Reviews everything that was triaged into each of my email categories (including VIP and Other) in the last 7 days.
2. Produces a short report: how many emails landed in each category, anything still sitting in "Other" that I should manually re-classify for next time, and any VIP items from this week.
3. Posts that report to Slack channel #[channel-name] as a formatted message.

Where do I manage the automation later?

Nothing you set up is permanent — every scheduled task can be paused, edited, or deleted at any time.