Real Agent Cases

Sort a week of unread email into reply, money and clutter with Gemini

Posted
by Akshay Bhalla (Android Police)
Last checked
Method:
How we verify

Evidence: Article or interviewA newsletter, journalist or interview account of what happened.

Beginner-friendlyNo logins, payments or coding needed. Low risk: paste the prompt and you should get something useful.

Outcome

Android Police's Akshay Bhalla, facing thousands of unread emails, set up a Gemini scheduled action that summarizes the last seven days of unread Gmail into three groups: threads needing his reply, financial emails like invoices and receipts, and low-priority newsletters and alerts. He says the near-daily report puts the few emails needing a reply front and center; with a second prompt to purge clutter, he says he cleaned 200 unread threads in an hour.

Poster says:200 unread threads cleaned in one hour

This is the source's own number. We haven't measured it.

Agent

Gemini in Gmail

Prompt Original prompt

Exact prompt as published in the source.

Summarize my unread emails from the last seven days. Group them into three clear categories:
1. Direct messages or threads that need a reply from me
2. Invoices, receipts, confirmations, or anything financial
3. Newsletters, promotions, alerts, and other low-priority stuff
For category 1, give me a short bullet list of who sent it and what they need. Keep the whole answer simple and easy to scan.
Optional stronger version

Our rewrite with extra checks. The poster didn't test it.

Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to.

Goal: Give me a quick daily summary of my unread email, grouped so I can answer what matters and ignore the rest.

Fill in before running:
- Time window: [e.g. last 7 days]
- Which inbox or label to look at: [INBOX]
- People or senders that are always important: [LIST]
- How often to run it: [daily / weekdays]

Rules:
- Group unread emails into: (1) need a reply from me, (2) invoices, receipts, bills and confirmations, (3) newsletters, promotions, alerts and other low-priority mail.
- For group 1, list sender and what they need in one line each, oldest first.
- For group 2, flag anything with a due date or amount owed.
- Don't delete, archive or reply to anything; this is a read-only summary.
- Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify.
- Add a fourth group for anything that looks like a scam or phishing, with the reason.

Output: A short, scannable summary with the three groups and counts.

You'll know it worked when: I can see in under a minute which emails need me today, and nothing important is buried in the low-priority group.

Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.

Source

https://www.androidpolice.com/gemini-gmail-prompt-clean-email-threads/

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