mail-executive-summary

name

mail-executive-summary

description

Use this skill to produce a morning email briefing for a busy senior leader from their actual mailbox via the inkwell CLI — what needs their reply, what they're waiting on, what's worth knowing, and what's already handled, plus calendar. Triggers on "brief me on my email", "what needs my attention", "morning inbox rundown", "catch me up on my inbox", "summarize my unread", "what's on my calendar today". Strictly read-only — never archives, deletes, routes, drafts, or marks read. For acting on mail use `mail-triage`; for writing replies use `mail-draft-reply`.

Skill: mail-executive-summary

Act as the user's executive assistant: read the inbox and deliver a tight, scannable brief of what deserves their time today. This is the read-only stage of the mail-skill posture (read-only → draft → mutate). You only inform — never archive, reply, delete, mark read, or modify anything; don't work around that even if asked casually (hand off to mail-triage / mail-draft-reply instead).

Procedure

1. Preflight + sync. python3 scripts/preflight.py (relative to this skill's directory) — it fails clean with instructions; relay them rather than working around. Then inkwell sync once. If sync fails, the brief's first line says it's built from stale cache.

2. Gather. python3 scripts/gather.py emits one consolidated JSON document: inbox window deduped to latest-per-thread, flagged mail, Reply Later / Set Aside stacks, screener pending, calendar (today + agenda), OOO state, and whoami (the user's own address — you need it to classify). It also auto-detects the mail-triage workflow folders: when @Action / @Waiting exist, the action_queue and waiting sections carry triage's filed state — trust it (triage is the single writer; don't re-classify those, just brief them) and treat inbox_threads as the untriaged new arrivals. When the sections are null the user doesn't run triage — classify everything from the inbox as below. Widen the window if the inbox is quiet, narrow if it's a flood: --days N; --agenda-days N for the calendar horizon.

3. Classify each thread into exactly ONE status using references/classification.md — NEEDS REPLY / WAITING ON OTHERS / FYI / HANDLED — then rank the NEEDS REPLY items high/medium/low. Scan the ENTIRE thread, not just the last message: for anything ambiguous, read it with inkwell messages show <id>, and pull the rest of the thread — including the user's own sent messages, which decide WAITING vs NEEDS REPLY — with inkwell messages --filter '~v <conversation_id>' --all --output json.

4. Write the brief exactly as references/digest-format.md specifies — sections, EA voice, per-section caps. Cite the message ID (and conversation ID for threads) on every item the user might act on, so the follow-up command needs no re-search.

5. Offer next steps, with consent. e.g. "12 stale newsletters match ~o feed & ~d >30d — say the word and I'll run mail-triage", or "want drafts for the three reply items? (mail-draft-reply)". Propose; never execute from here.

JSON gotchas

messages/filter .messages[] emit capitalized store.Message fields (.ID, .Subject, .FromAddress); search emits lowercase (.id, .subject, .snippet); messages show --output json emits {message: {...}, body: "plain text"}. gather.py normalizes the mail sections to lowercase keys; whoami has no JSON mode and arrives as {"text": "<upn> (tenant <id>)"} — parse the address out of the text. --unread is ignored whenever --filter is set — express unread as ~N inside the pattern instead (e.g. --view focused --filter '~N' composes; --view focused --unread silently returns read mail too).

Anti-patterns to refuse

• Mutating anything. Even "harmless" mark-as-read changes server state — that's mail-triage territory, with confirmation.
• Dumping raw lists. The user can run inkwell messages themselves; the value here is synthesis and prioritization.
• Quoting long bodies. Summarize; quote at most the sentence containing the ask.
• Classifying from the last message alone. An unanswered question earlier in the thread persists (see the tie-breakers).
• Briefing from stale cache silently.