email-unsubscribe-check

name	email-unsubscribe-check
description	Use when user wants to find promotional or unwanted recurring emails to unsubscribe from, or when doing periodic inbox hygiene to identify senders worth unsubscribing from

Email Unsubscribe Check

Scan recent inbox emails to surface promotional, newsletter, and digest senders the user likely wants to unsubscribe from. Actually unsubscribe via browser automation.

Workflow

digraph unsubscribe_check {
    "Search recent inbox emails" -> "Group by sender domain";
    "Group by sender domain" -> "Classify each sender";
    "Classify each sender" -> "Obvious unsubscribe?";
    "Obvious unsubscribe?" -> "Present to user for confirmation" [label="yes"];
    "Obvious unsubscribe?" -> "Borderline?" [label="no"];
    "Borderline?" -> "Ask user" [label="yes"];
    "Borderline?" -> "Skip" [label="no, personal"];
    "Present to user for confirmation" -> "User confirms?";
    "User confirms?" -> "Actually unsubscribe" [label="yes"];
    "User confirms?" -> "Skip" [label="no"];
    "Actually unsubscribe" -> "Mark matching emails read + archive";
    "Mark matching emails read + archive" -> "Create Gmail filter";
    "Create Gmail filter" -> "Retroactively clean old emails";
}

Execution Default

• Start the workflow immediately when this skill is invoked.
• Do not ask a kickoff question like "should I start now?".
• Default scan window is newer_than:7d unless the user already specified a different range.
• Only ask a follow-up question before starting if required information is missing and execution would otherwise be blocked.
• Default user preference: they generally do not want subscription-style email in their inbox.
• For obvious marketing/newsletter/digest mail with a working unsubscribe path, unsubscribe by default without asking for confirmation first.
• Still ask first for borderline cases such as creator subscriptions, professional communities, event platforms, or anything that appears transactional/security-sensitive.

How to Scan

1. Search recent emails: newer_than:7d (or wider if user requests)
2. Identify senders that look promotional/automated/digest
3. Present findings grouped by confidence:
   • Clearly unsubscribeable: marketing, promos, digests user never engages with
   • Ask user: newsletters, community content, event platforms (might be wanted)

When the user's standing preference is to keep subscriptions out of the inbox, treat the Clearly unsubscribeable bucket as auto-actionable.

Unsubscribe Execution

For each confirmed sender, do ALL of these:

1. Actually unsubscribe via browser (most important step)

Two approaches depending on the sender:

For emails with unsubscribe links:

• Read the email via gws gmail to find the unsubscribe URL (usually at bottom of email body)
• Navigate to the URL in the browser via the Chrome extension
• Take a snapshot, find the confirmation button/checkbox
• Click through to complete the unsubscribe
• Verify the confirmation page

For services with email settings pages (Nextdoor, LinkedIn, etc.):

• Navigate to the service's notification/email settings page
• Log in using credentials from pass if needed
• Find and disable all email notification toggles
• Check ALL categories (digests, alerts, promotions, etc.)

2. Create Gmail filter as backup

Even after unsubscribing, create a filter to catch stragglers:

gws gmail users settings filters create \
  --params '{"userId":"me"}' \
  --json '{"criteria":{"from":"domain.com"},"action":{"removeLabelIds":["INBOX"]}}'

3. Mark old emails as read and archive them (minimum hygiene)

After unsubscribing, clean up existing email from the sender.

• At minimum: mark them as read.
• Preferred/default: also archive them (remove INBOX label).

Example:

gws gmail users messages list --params '{"userId":"me","q":"from:domain.com","maxResults":50}'
gws gmail users messages batchModify \
  --params '{"userId":"me"}' \
  --json '{"ids":["..."],"removeLabelIds":["UNREAD","INBOX"]}'

Signals That an Email is Unsubscribeable

• "no-reply@" or "newsletter@" sender addresses
• Marketing subject lines: sales, promotions, "don't miss", digests
• Bulk senders: Nextdoor, Yelp, LinkedIn digest, social media notifications
• Community digests the user doesn't engage with
• Financial marketing (not transactional alerts)
• "Your weekly/daily/monthly" summaries
• Messages with explicit unsubscribe/manage-preferences links whose primary purpose is promotional or newsletter delivery

Signals to NOT Auto-Unsubscribe (Ask First)

• Patreon/creator content
• Event platforms (Luma, Eventbrite, Meetup)
• Professional communities
• Services the user actively uses (even if noisy)
• Transactional emails from wanted services