# Email Triage > The shared-inbox triage runbook — how to read a new inbound email, label it, look up {{help_doc}} for a standard answer, draft a reply in Gmail or file a ticket in {{linear_team}}, and when to leave a thread label-only for a human. - Skill: `kortix-ai/email-triage` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add kortix-ai/email-triage` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/kortix-ai/email-triage/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Productivity - Author: kortix-ai (https://skillmd.com/u/kortix-ai) - Updated: 2026-09-10 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/kortix-ai/email-triage --- Every inbound email in the shared inbox gets read, labelled, and routed to one of three outcomes: a drafted reply, a filed Linear ticket, or a label-only hold for a human. A scheduled check spawns a fresh session with scoped, read/write access to Gmail and Linear and read access to {{help_doc}}; this skill is the standard the triage is done to, so the agent doesn't reinvent categories or tone on every run. A single check can turn up several new messages at once — handle each as an independent unit: a failure or bad match on one message never blocks triage of the others found in the same pass. Nothing customer-facing ever sends from this skill — a draft is the most it produces. - The scheduled inbox check fires and there is new inbound mail to triage. - A human asks why a specific thread got the label, draft, or ticket it did. - A human asks the agent to re-triage the current inbox on demand. ## Step 1 — Pull what's new Check the shared Gmail inbox for messages that arrived since the last check and don't already carry a triage label. Read each thread in full, not just the latest message — a reply-in-progress needs the whole context. ## Step 2 — Categorize the message Classify every thread into exactly one category: | Category | Signal | Label | |---|---|---| | Support question | Asking how something works, a how-to, an account question with a known answer | `triage/support` | | Bug report | Something broken, an error, unexpected behavior | `triage/bug` | | Sales lead | Pricing, demo, or new-customer interest | `triage/sales` | | Billing / invoice | Payment, invoice, or subscription question | `triage/billing` | | Other / spam | Not a real request, or nothing the team needs to act on | `triage/other` | Apply the label in Gmail regardless of what happens next — every message that's triaged gets exactly one category label. ## Step 3 — Look up the help doc for support questions For `triage/support`, search {{help_doc}} for the closest matching answer before writing anything. Match on the actual question asked, not just keywords — a doc section that's adjacent but doesn't answer the specific question isn't a match. | Match quality | Action | |---|---| | Doc directly answers the question | Draft a reply (Step 4) | | Doc partially answers it, or the question combines two topics | Draft a reply covering what the doc supports; note in the draft what's uncertain | | No relevant section in the doc | Label only — leave it for a human, don't guess | ## Step 4 — Draft the reply (never send) Write the reply in the sender's language and tone: direct, helpful, answer first. Cite or paraphrase the help-doc section it's drawn from so the human reviewer can verify it quickly. Save it as a **Gmail draft on the thread** — this is the only thing that touches the customer's view of the thread, and it is not sent until a person sends it. ## Step 5 — File bug reports and follow-ups in Linear For `triage/bug` and any `triage/support` thread that needs engineering follow-up rather than a reply, create a ticket in the **{{linear_team}}** team: - Title: a short, specific summary of the reported problem. - Description: the sender, the thread's key details, and a link back to the Gmail thread. - Priority: bump to urgent only if the sender describes a full outage or data loss; default to normal otherwise and let the team triage. Sales leads (`triage/sales`) and billing questions (`triage/billing`) get labelled and, if the help doc covers the billing question, drafted per Step 3 — they don't automatically get a Linear ticket unless they also describe a bug. ## Step 6 — Leave `triage/other` alone Label and move on. No draft, no ticket, no further action. ## Step 7 — Stop One pass over the new mail is one run. There's no ledger to update — the next scheduled check re-reads whatever the inbox looks like then. - **Draft only, never send.** Every reply is a Gmail draft on the thread. The agent never sends a customer-facing email itself, no matter how confident the match to {{help_doc}} is. - **No memory between runs.** Each check is a fresh session; the current inbox and label state is the only source of truth, not what a prior run concluded. - **Don't guess past the doc.** If {{help_doc}} doesn't clearly answer a support question, label it and stop — a wrong drafted answer waiting for rubber-stamp approval is worse than no draft. - **Scoped secrets.** Gmail, Linear, and help-doc access are brokered through connectors; no raw token is ever shown to the model or written to logs. - **People decide, not the agent.** The agent labels, drafts, and files — whether a draft sends or a ticket's priority changes is a human call.