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How to Automate Your Email with OpenClaw (Inbox Zero in 30 Minutes)

Your inbox shouldn't run your day. This guide shows you how to set up OpenClaw as your AI email assistant — triaging messages, drafting replies, scheduling follow-ups, and filtering newsletters — so you spend 5 minutes on email instead of 2 hours.

The average professional spends 2.5 hours per day on email. Most of that time is wasted on scanning subject lines, deciding what's urgent, writing routine replies, and tracking who hasn't responded.

OpenClaw eliminates the busywork. After this 30-minute setup, your AI agent will triage every incoming email, categorize it by type and urgency, draft replies for your review, remind you about unanswered threads, and turn your newsletter chaos into a single weekly digest.

This isn't a theoretical walkthrough. Every command below is copy-pasteable, and I'll show you exactly what the AI outputs at each step.

Why Automate Email with AI?

Email automation isn't about ignoring your inbox. It's about making decisions faster. Here's what changes:

• No more scanning: Your agent reads every email and tells you which ones actually need your attention
• Faster replies: 70-80% of your replies are variations of the same 10-15 responses. The AI drafts them; you review and send
• Nothing falls through the cracks: Automated follow-up tracking means you never forget to chase a response
• Newsletter noise disappears: Subscriptions get separated from real emails and compressed into a single digest

OpenClaw community members consistently report this as the single most impactful automation they run. One Discord member put it bluntly: "Email triage alone justified the entire OpenClaw setup for me."

Step 1: Connect Your Email to OpenClaw

OpenClaw connects to any email provider via standard IMAP/SMTP protocols. You'll need your email address, server settings, and an app-specific password.

Gmail setup

# Connect Gmail to OpenClaw
openclaw channel add email \
  --imap-host imap.gmail.com \
  --imap-port 993 \
  --smtp-host smtp.gmail.com \
  --smtp-port 587 \
  --email you@gmail.com \
  --password "your-app-password"

Outlook / Microsoft 365

openclaw channel add email \
  --imap-host outlook.office365.com \
  --imap-port 993 \
  --smtp-host smtp.office365.com \
  --smtp-port 587 \
  --email you@outlook.com \
  --password "your-app-password"

Other providers

Any IMAP-compatible provider works — Yahoo, iCloud, ProtonMail (via Bridge), Fastmail, Zoho. Just look up your provider's IMAP/SMTP settings and substitute them in the command.

Step 2: Set Up AI Email Triage

Email triage is the core automation. Every morning (or every hour — your choice), OpenClaw scans your inbox and sorts messages by urgency.

Create the triage cron job

# Morning triage at 7 AM, delivered to Telegram
openclaw cron add email-triage \
  --schedule "0 7 * * *" \
  --prompt "Check my email inbox for all unread messages. Categorize each email as:
🔴 URGENT — needs response today (client issues, deadlines, boss/direct reports)
🟡 IMPORTANT — needs response within 48 hours
🟢 FYI — informational, no response needed
📰 NEWSLETTER — subscription content

For urgent and important emails, include: sender, subject, and a one-line summary of what they need.
For FYI and newsletters, just list sender and subject.
Put urgent emails first." \
  --channel telegram

📧 Inbox Triage — 14 unread

🔴 URGENT (2):
• Sarah Kim (Acme Corp) — "Invoice #4521 overdue"
  → Asking for payment confirmation. Invoice was due Feb 10.
• Dev Team — "Prod database at 94% capacity"
  → Need to approve scaling request or archive old data today.

🟡 IMPORTANT (3):
• David Chen — "Partnership proposal follow-up"
  → Wants to schedule a call this week to discuss terms.
• HR — "Benefits enrollment deadline Feb 20"
  → Need to select health plan by Thursday.
• Maria Santos — "Q1 marketing deck review"
  → Attached deck, wants feedback by Friday.

🟢 FYI (4):
• GitHub — 3 PR notifications
• Jira — Sprint #14 started
• Slack digest — 12 unread channels
• Amazon — Shipping confirmation, arrives Wed

📰 NEWSLETTERS (5):
• Stratechery, Morning Brew, TLDR, Hacker Newsletter, Dense Discovery

In under 10 seconds, you know exactly what needs your attention. No scanning, no guessing, no missing urgent messages buried under newsletters.

Add on-demand triage commands

Beyond the morning cron, you can check email anytime by messaging your agent:

• "Any urgent emails since my last check?"
• "Emails from Sarah Kim this week"
• "Did anyone reply to the partnership proposal?"
• "Show me all unread emails from @acmecorp.com"

OpenClaw's persistent memory means it remembers previous triage results. Ask "what about that invoice email?" hours later and it knows exactly which one you mean.

I documented my complete email automation setup in a free guide — including the exact prompts and filters I use.

Step 3: Auto-Categorize Your Inbox

Take triage further by teaching OpenClaw your personal categorization system. Add this to your AGENTS.md or SOUL.md:

# Add to your SOUL.md or AGENTS.md
## Email Categorization Rules

When triaging email, also tag each message with a category:
- CLIENT — anything from @acmecorp.com, @bigclient.com, or known client addresses
- TEAM — internal team emails, standup notes, sprint updates
- SALES — inbound leads, partnership inquiries, vendor pitches
- FINANCE — invoices, receipts, payment confirmations, expense reports
- PERSONAL — non-work emails that still matter
- NOISE — automated notifications I don't need to see (GitHub bots, Jira updates)

Once this is saved, your agent automatically applies these categories to every triage run. Over time, it learns your preferences — if you consistently mark certain senders as NOISE, it starts doing it automatically.

Smart filtering by category

After categorization is running, you can query by category:

• "Show me all CLIENT emails from this week"
• "Any SALES leads I haven't responded to?"
• "Summarize FINANCE emails from January"

Step 4: Generate Draft Replies

This is where you save the most time. Instead of writing every reply from scratch, OpenClaw drafts context-aware responses for your review.

Configure draft reply behavior

# Add to SOUL.md
## Email Reply Style

When I ask you to draft a reply:
- Match my tone: professional but warm, not corporate-stiff
- Keep replies under 150 words unless the topic requires detail
- Always acknowledge what they asked before answering
- Sign off with "Best, Espen" (no full signature block)
- If I say "quick reply" — make it 2-3 sentences max
- Never commit to deadlines without my explicit approval
- For meeting requests, check my calendar before suggesting times

Using draft replies

Message your agent with natural language:

You: "Draft a reply to Sarah's invoice email — tell her
     payment is processing and should arrive by Friday"

Agent: Here's the draft:

---
Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the reminder on Invoice #4521. The payment is
currently processing on our end and should hit your account
by Friday, February 20.

Let me know if you don't see it by then and I'll follow up
with our finance team.

Best,
Espen
---

Want me to send this, or would you like changes?

You review, make any tweaks, and approve. The agent sends it. What would have taken 3-5 minutes of composing takes 15 seconds of reviewing.

Batch draft mode

For maximum efficiency, try batch drafting:

You: "Draft replies for all IMPORTANT emails from today's triage"

Agent: Here are 3 draft replies:

1. David Chen (Partnership proposal):
   [draft suggesting Tuesday 2pm or Thursday 10am for a call]

2. HR (Benefits enrollment):
   [draft confirming Plan B selection]

3. Maria Santos (Q1 deck review):
   [draft acknowledging receipt, committing to feedback by Thursday]

Want me to send all three, or review individually?

Three replies, drafted and ready to send, in under 30 seconds. That's the power of an AI email assistant that knows your style and context.

Step 5: Schedule Follow-Up Reminders

Unanswered emails are lost opportunities. OpenClaw tracks which emails need follow-ups and reminds you when it's time to nudge.

Automatic follow-up tracking

# Create a follow-up check cron job (runs daily at 4 PM)
openclaw cron add email-followups \
  --schedule "0 16 * * *" \
  --prompt "Check my sent emails from the past 7 days. Find any that haven't received a reply yet. For each unanswered email, tell me:
- Who I emailed and when
- What I asked them
- Whether I should follow up today or wait

Skip automated/no-reply addresses. Only flag emails where I'm genuinely waiting for a human response." \
  --channel telegram

📬 Follow-Up Check — 3 unanswered emails

⏰ FOLLOW UP TODAY:
• David Chen — sent Feb 12 (4 days ago)
  Asked about partnership call scheduling
  → Suggest: gentle nudge, he may have missed it

• Accounting — sent Feb 13 (3 days ago)
  Requested expense report approval
  → Suggest: follow up, approval deadline is Friday

⏳ WAIT:
• Maria Santos — sent yesterday
  Sent Q1 deck feedback
  → Too early to follow up, give her until Thursday

You can then tell the agent: "Draft a follow-up to David" and it'll compose a polite nudge referencing the original email context.

Step 6: Filter and Digest Newsletters

Newsletters are valuable but overwhelming. Instead of 15 daily subscription emails cluttering your inbox, OpenClaw compresses them into a single weekly digest.

# Weekly newsletter digest every Sunday at 9 AM
openclaw cron add newsletter-digest \
  --schedule "0 9 * * 0" \
  --prompt "Find all newsletter and subscription emails from this week. For each one:
- Give me the publication name
- List the top 2-3 most interesting topics/articles
- Include any links worth reading

Group by category: Tech, Business, Design, Other.
Skip promotional emails and pure marketing — only include newsletters with actual content." \
  --channel telegram

📰 Weekly Newsletter Digest — Feb 10-16

🖥️ TECH:
• Stratechery — AI agent economics analysis, Apple's
  new on-device models
• TLDR — OpenClaw hits 200K stars, Rust 2.0 preview
• Hacker Newsletter — "Why SQLite is taking over"
  (top HN thread, 847 comments)

💼 BUSINESS:
• Morning Brew — Fed rate decision impact, retail
  earnings preview
• Lenny's Newsletter — "The PM's guide to AI features"

🎨 DESIGN:
• Dense Discovery — New design tools roundup, typography
  trends for 2026

Worth reading this week:
1. Stratechery AI agent piece → [link]
2. SQLite article from HN → [link]
3. Lenny's PM guide → [link]

Fifteen newsletters, compressed into a 30-second scan. You read the 2-3 articles that matter and skip the rest — without unsubscribing from anything.

Time Saved: Before vs. After

That's roughly 1.5 hours per day — or over 7 hours per week — returned to work that actually matters. Over a year, that's nearly 350 hours you're not spending on email.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can OpenClaw send emails automatically without my approval?

By default, OpenClaw drafts replies for your review. You can enable auto-send for low-risk categories (like meeting confirmations), but most users keep human-in-the-loop for important emails. Configure this in your AGENTS.md with send policies per category.

Does OpenClaw email automation work with Outlook and Yahoo Mail?

Yes. OpenClaw connects via standard IMAP/SMTP, which works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, ProtonMail Bridge, and any provider supporting IMAP. You just need the correct server settings and an app-specific password.

How much time does email automation with OpenClaw actually save?

Users consistently report saving 30-45 minutes per day. The biggest time savings come from email triage (no more scanning every subject line), draft replies (70-80% need only minor edits), and follow-up tracking (no more manually checking who hasn't responded).

Is it safe to give OpenClaw access to my email?

OpenClaw runs locally on your machine. Your emails are processed on-device and only sent to the AI model API for analysis. Use app-specific passwords (not your main password), run in Docker for extra isolation, and start with draft-only mode before enabling any auto-send features.