Email Processing

What I do

Automate Gmail inbox triage with rule-based patterns and AI fallback. It labels, archives, keeps, or escalates emails and can notify the user on Discord.

Core files

• emails/check-emails.sh - hourly processor
• emails/email-patterns.json - sender/subject rules and settings
• emails/check.log - run log
• emails/last-run.txt - last successful run epoch
• emails/processed.json - last 24 hours of processed decisions

Workflow

1. Skip quiet hours
2. Search inbox using after:<last_run_epoch> or a quiet-hours catch-up window
3. Apply rules from email-patterns.json
4. If no rule matches, ask AI for a decision
5. Apply action (keep, archive, label)
6. Notify on Discord if needed
7. Record decision in processed.json

Settings

email-patterns.json contains:

{
  "settings": {
    "check_interval_hours": 1,
    "quiet_hours_start": "22:00",
    "quiet_hours_end": "08:00",
    "max_emails_per_run": 20
  }
}

Pattern rules

Each rule supports:

{
  "sender": "example.com",
  "subject_match": "receipt|order",
  "action": "label|archive|keep|escalate",
  "label": "Orders/example.com",
  "subject_label": "Orders/example.com",
  "notify_user": true,
  "reason": "Short explanation"
}

If notify_user is true, a Discord message is sent when the pattern matches.

AI triage

When no pattern matches, the script calls the AI with a strict JSON response format:

{"action": "keep|archive|label", "label": "label_name", "notify_user": true/false, "message": "short explanation"}

Blank or invalid responses are normalized to safe defaults.

Processed log

emails/processed.json keeps the last 24 hours of decisions:

{
  "id": "gmail_message_id",
  "from": "Sender Name <sender@example.com>",
  "subject": "Email subject",
  "action": "keep|archive|label",
  "label": "label_name",
  "notify": "true|false",
  "ai_used": "true|false",
  "message": "short note",
  "processed_at": "2026-02-17T08:00:03-07:00"
}

Common commands

# Run the check manually
./emails/check-emails.sh

# List inbox matches (gog)
gog gmail search "newer_than:24h in:inbox" --max 20

Tips

• Use after:<epoch> for catch-up across quiet hours.
• Keep patterns specific to avoid mislabeling.
• Log decisions to debug missed notifications.
• Add explicit notify_user for high-signal senders.