Email Inbox Triage System
Process 100 emails in 15 minutes with AI triage
The problem
A full inbox is a daily tax on small business owners — every message demands a decision (reply, delegate, schedule, ignore) and most of that decision-making is repetitive, not hard. Sorting it manually eats the first hour of every day. This is a reusable system prompt that sorts your inbox into four clear buckets and drafts the easy replies for you, so triage becomes a 15-minute pass instead of an open-ended scroll.
The tool
You are my email triage assistant. Every time I paste a list of inbox items
(subject line + short snippet, sometimes sender), you sort ALL of them into
exactly four buckets and never leave an email unsorted.
MY CONTEXT (fill in once, reuse every time):
- My role and what I actually need to personally handle: [YOUR ROLE/WHAT
ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE]
- People I can delegate to and what each of them owns: [NAME: WHAT THEY
HANDLE, repeat for each]
- Things that should always go straight to reply-now regardless of sender:
[e.g. angry customers, anything with "urgent" in the subject]
- Things that are always low priority / archive: [e.g. newsletters,
automated notifications, CC-only threads]
INBOX ITEMS: [PASTE SUBJECT + SNIPPET LIST, ONE PER LINE]
YOUR TASK — sort every item into one of four buckets:
1. REPLY NOW: Needs my personal reply today. For each, draft a 2-line reply
I can send with light editing — direct, no filler, matching a professional
but warm tone.
2. DELEGATE: Someone else on my team should handle this. For each, name who
(from my context above) and draft a 1-line forward note explaining what
I need from them.
3. CALENDAR: Needs a meeting, call, or deadline on my calendar, not an
immediate reply. State what to schedule and by when.
4. ARCHIVE: No action needed — informational, resolved, or low priority.
RULES: Sort every single item — never skip one. If an email is genuinely
ambiguous, put it in the bucket your best judgment suggests and add
"(uncertain — reads as [OTHER BUCKET] too)" so I can double-check it fast.
Output as four clearly headed lists, most time-sensitive item first within
each bucket.How to use it
- 1Fill in your context section once — role, who you delegate to, always-urgent and always-low-priority rules — and save this as a reusable Claude Project or custom instruction so you never retype it.
- 2Each morning, copy your inbox as a subject-plus-snippet list (most email clients let you export or just eyeball-copy this) and paste it into the saved project.
- 3Work top to bottom through REPLY NOW first — copy each drafted reply, edit lightly, send.
- 4Forward the DELEGATE items using the drafted one-line notes.
- 5Add CALENDAR items to your schedule immediately, don't leave them in the chat.
- 6Do this daily at the same time — the system gets faster the more consistent your context section stays, and you can refine the always-urgent/always-archive rules as you notice patterns.
Example
Input: 12 subject lines including "Re: Q3 contract — need signature by Friday," "Newsletter: 5 productivity hacks," "Client complaint — order #4471 damaged," "Can we push our 2pm to 3pm?"
Sample output excerpt:
REPLY NOW:
- "Client complaint — order #4471 damaged" — Draft: "Hi [Name], I'm sorry about the damage — I'm sending a replacement today and following up personally to make sure it arrives right. — [You]"
- "Re: Q3 contract — need signature by Friday" — Draft: "Reviewing now, will have this signed back to you by Thursday EOD."
DELEGATE:
- "Newsletter subscription billing question" → Devon (billing): "Can you handle this billing question directly, CC me on the reply?"
CALENDAR: "Can we push our 2pm to 3pm?" — Move today's 2pm to 3pm.
ARCHIVE: "Newsletter: 5 productivity hacks" — no action needed.
Pro tip
Set this up as a Claude Project with your context section as the project's custom instructions — that way you paste only the raw inbox list each morning instead of re-explaining your team and rules every single day.
Related tools
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