📧 Email Triage with Auto-Draft Replies

The problem

Inbox zero is a fantasy because 70% of your email is near-identical: scheduling, status updates, 'can you send X', intro requests. You write the same 5 replies every week. That's cognitive tax for no output — the actual thinking per email is under 30 seconds but the transition cost adds up to an hour a day.

The outcome

Every incoming email gets a category (urgent / waiting-on-you / FYI / ignore) and — for the ones that need a reply — a draft that matches your voice. You open the draft, skim, and hit send. Email that used to take 60 minutes takes 15.

Why Hermes

Hermes keeps working in the background: its cron jobs run a prompt on a schedule and deliver the result (see our scheduled-jobs guide), and its persistent memory lets it learn your reply style over time. Hermes itself is open source and self-hostable, so the main cost is the model you connect.

Alternatives worth considering

• OpenClaw — Use cron-based triage if you'd rather run it in batches (e.g., 3× daily) than continuously
• Claude Cowork — If you prefer to paste email text into a Claude Project and get draft replies on-demand — less setup, less automation

Setup steps

1. Step 1: Connect your mailbox

   Hermes reaches email through the tools and MCP servers you connect (see our MCP tools guide). Use OAuth or an app password with the narrowest scope: read and label, never delete.

2. Step 2: Seed Hermes memory with past replies

   Give Hermes a sample of your sent emails and ask it to note your tone, sign-off and length in its memory. This is the biggest lever on draft quality.

3. Step 3: Define triage rules in plain English

   Write a policy like: 'Urgent = client questions, payment issues, or anything from [boss]. FYI = newsletters, receipts. Draft replies for: meeting requests, intro requests, status pings.'

4. Step 4: Add the 'never auto-send' guardrail

   Configure the mail tool to create drafts, not send, so every reply waits in your drafts folder for you to review and send. Non-negotiable.

5. Step 5: Review after a week and tune

   Check the draft-acceptance rate. If you're rewriting more than 30% of drafts, tell Hermes to remember the corrected versions.

Example prompt

Triage this email. Categorize (urgent/waiting/FYI/ignore). If it needs a reply, draft one matching my past tone — keep it under 100 words, use my sign-off, and never commit to a meeting time without checking my calendar first.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Auto-sending replies. Never. An agent that sends on your behalf will eventually send something wrong to someone important. Draft-only is the rule.
• Training on personal emails only. If you also do work email, train separately or the tones will bleed (casual replies to formal threads).
• Skipping the privacy review. Your email contains everything: passwords, financial data, private conversations. Check where memory is stored and which model provider sees your messages.

Cost breakdown (monthly)

Cost: Model usage only. Model rates change often; check the model pricing table or the cost calculator for current figures.

Related guides

• Hermes setup
• Memory system
• Background tasks
• Model API pricing