email-triage

name	email-triage
description	Gmail inbox triage with self-learning SQLite pattern database. Multi-account support with whitelist/blacklist, keyword-domain-essence scoring, and daily feedback sweep learning. Use when the user asks to check email, triage inbox, or during automated email triage cron runs.
metadata	{"author":"github.com/LeoSaucedo","openclaw":{"requires":{"bins":["python3","sqlite3","gog"]}}}

Email Triage

AI gatekeeper — important stays in inbox, noise goes to a configurable waiting label. Self-learning from feedback sweeps.

First-time setup: See INSTALL.md for DB schema, folder structure, seed files, and cron job configuration.

Repo note: This file lives at email-triage/SKILL.md in the skills repo. Cron jobs reference it from the workspace root as skills/email-triage/SKILL.md.

Working Directory

Isolated agent cwd = workspace root (/home/ada/.openclaw/workspace). All paths in cron payloads and this file are relative to that root. Data files live in email-triage/. The SKILL.md lives at skills/email-triage/SKILL.md (a git checkout of this repo into the workspace skills/ folder).

Architecture

Two cron jobs:

1. Triage (every 45 min) — Steps 1-8 below. Processes new email only, no feedback sweep.
2. Feedback Sweep (daily) — See section at bottom. Sweeps the full 24h log, checks label state, updates learned patterns.

Trigger

Cron every 45 min → isolated agent reads this skill and executes Steps 1-8.

Data Files

File	Load	Write	Purpose
email-triage/accounts.json	Step 0	No	Which accounts to check + waiting-label name per account
email-triage/state.json	Step 1	Step 6	lastRun + counters
email-triage/seen.json	Step 1	Step 6	Thread deduplication per account — {"<account>": {"<threadId>": {"ts": "..."}}}
email-triage/whitelist.json	Step 1	No	Hard keep rules — {"senders":[],"domains":[]}
email-triage/blacklist.json	Step 1	No	Hard filter rules — {"senders":[],"domains":[]}
email-triage/learned.db	Step 4d (query per email)	No (feedback cron writes)	Pattern weights (domain scores + keyword scores + essence types) — SQLite
email-triage/log.jsonl	Step 8 (read for archive)	Step 7	Working log — last 24h. One JSON object per line: {ts,decision,threadId,sender,subject,account,reason}
email-triage/audit.jsonl	No	Step 8	Archive — last 90 days. Same format as log.jsonl
USER.md	Step 4e (AI eval path only)	No	Personal context
MEMORY.md	Step 4e (AI eval path only)	No	Recent events

---

Step 0: Load Accounts

Read email-triage/accounts.json. It contains a JSON array of account objects:

[
  {"email": "[e-mail]", "waitingLabel": "Boxbe Waiting List"},
  {"email": "[e-mail]", "waitingLabel": "Boxbe Waiting List"}
]

For every step below, loop over ALL accounts in the array. Each account gets its own gog command with --account <email>. Each account's log entries include "account":"<email>".

---

Workflow (Triage)

1. Load Rules & State

Read these workspace files (small, fast):

• email-triage/state.json
• email-triage/seen.json
• email-triage/whitelist.json
• email-triage/blacklist.json

Do NOT load learned.db upfront. Query it per-email in step 4d. Do NOT load USER.md or MEMORY.md here — defer to step 4e AI-eval path only.

2. Compute Search Window (per account)

From lastRun in state, keyed per account:

• State tracks lastRun as a map: {"lastRun": {"<account>": "<ISO UTC>"}}
• Null or >7d → newer_than:1d
• Otherwise → hoursSince = ceil((now − lastRun) / 3600000), round up to: 1h → 2h → 3h → 6h → 12h → 1d → 2d → 3d → 1w
• Minimum: newer_than:1h

3. Fetch Unread Emails (per account)

gog gmail search "is:unread in:inbox newer_than:<COMPUTED>" --all --json --no-input --account <email>

Returns per thread: id, date, from, subject, labels, messageCount. No body loaded. If zero results for an account, skip that account's remaining processing (no state change for that account). If results were found and processed, that account's lastRun will be updated in Step 6.

4. Process Each Thread (per account)

Two-tier evaluation. Only fetch body when ambiguous.

For each thread from step 3:

4a. Dedup check: If thread ID exists in email-triage/seen.json for this account → skip.

4b. Check BLACKLIST (case-insensitive, match from email OR domain):

BLACKLIST → move to <waitingLabel>, log, continue

4c. Check WHITELIST (case-insensitive, match from email OR domain):

WHITELIST → keep in inbox, log, continue

4d. Score against learned patterns (query email-triage/learned.db per email — do NOT load entire DB):

First-run: If learned.db does not exist, skip to AI evaluation (4e). The DB will be created on the first feedback sweep.

Extract sender domain (everything after @ in the from address) and tokenize the subject into lowercase keywords (filter stop words: a, an, the, and, or, but, in, on, at, to, for, of, with, by, from, is, are, was, were, be, been, being, have, has, had, do, does, did, will, would, can, could, shall, should, may, might, must, i, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them, my, your, his, its, our, their, this, that, these, those, not, no, nor, so, if, than, too, very, just, also, about, up, out, when, where, how, all, both, each, every, any, few, more, most, other, some, such, only, own, same, new, now, then, here, there).

Run these queries (use python3 with sqlite3 module, reading from email-triage/learned.db):

import sqlite3, sys
db = sqlite3.connect('email-triage/learned.db')

# 1. Domain score
domain = sys.argv[1]  # bare domain from sender
row = db.execute('SELECT score FROM domains WHERE domain = ?', (domain,)).fetchone()
domain_score = row[0] if row else 0.0

# 2. Keyword scores (args 2 through second-to-last are the keywords)
# Last arg (sys.argv[-1]) is the essence type, NOT a keyword
keywords = sys.argv[2:-1]
if keywords:
    placeholders = ','.join(['?'] * len(keywords))
    rows = db.execute(
        f'SELECT keyword, score FROM patterns WHERE keyword IN ({placeholders})',
        keywords
    ).fetchall()
    keyword_score = sum(r[1] for r in rows)
else:
    keyword_score = 0.0

# 3. Essence type score
essence_type = sys.argv[-1]  # inferred type name, e.g. "marketing_promo"
row = db.execute('SELECT score FROM essence_types WHERE name = ?', (essence_type,)).fetchone()
essence_score = row[0] if row else 0.0

combined = domain_score + keyword_score + essence_score
print(combined)

Only query the DB for patterns matching this specific email — never load the entire DB into context.

Infer the essence type from the subject, sender, and labels before scoring. Known types currently in the DB (this list is not exhaustive — new types are created dynamically during feedback sweeps when an email doesn't match an existing category):

• marketing_promo — promotional emails, sales, discounts
• newsletter — recurring newsletters, digests, roundups
• bank_notification — bank alerts, credit card notices, payment confirmations
• travel_alert — flight updates, booking confirmations, hotel reservations
• receipt_confirmation — purchase receipts, order confirmations
• insurance_claim — claim updates, policy notices
• social_media — notifications from social platforms
• personal_message — direct personal emails from real people
• work_related — work/professional correspondence
• automated_digest — system-generated summaries (Informed Delivery, OneDrive, etc.)
• subscription — subscription management, welcome emails
• cold_outreach — unsolicited sales outreach, cold emails

Pick the single best-fitting type for this email and pass it as the last argument to the scoring script. If no type fits, pass "unknown" (will score 0.0).

The combined learned score = domain_score + keyword_score + essence_score. If the score is:

• Combined ≤ −1.0 → strong WAITING signal → move, log, continue
• Combined ≥ 1.0 → strong KEEP signal → keep, log, continue
• Otherwise → proceed to AI evaluation

4e. AI evaluation from subject + sender first (no body yet):

Using from + subject + labels from search output, decide KEEP vs WAITING.

KEEP signals from subject alone:

• "action required", "respond by", "deadline", "confirm", "verification"
• Financial keywords: "deposit", "payment", "paid", "balance", "credit"
• Travel: "flight", "booking", "itinerary", "reservation", "hotel", "check-in"
• Legal/government: "DMV", "IRS", "court", "notice", "summons"
• Work domains
• Insurance: "claim", "policy", "coverage"
• Real person writing (personal tone in subject)
• Receipt confirmations for purchases

WAITING signals from subject alone:

• "weekly", "digest", "roundup", "newsletter"
• Promotional: "% off", "sale", "deal", "save", "limited time"
• Social media notifications
• "welcome to", "subscription", "you've been added"
• Automated digests (Informed Delivery, OneDrive memories, Nextdoor)
• Cold/mass outreach, templated marketing

If decision is clear → execute, log, continue. No body fetch.

If ambiguous → only then fetch body:

gog gmail thread get <threadId> --json --no-input --account <email>

Load USER.md and MEMORY.md for context. Evaluate body content against user's interests, then decide.

Default: when unsure → KEEP in inbox.

5. Execute Decision

KEEP: Do nothing. Log: {"ts":"<ISO8601>","decision":"KEPT","threadId":"<id>","sender":"<email>","subject":"<text>","account":"<email>","reason":"<reason>"}

WAITING:

gog gmail labels modify <threadId> --add "<waitingLabel>" --remove INBOX --no-input --force --account <email>

Log: {"ts":"<ISO8601>","decision":"WAITING","threadId":"<id>","sender":"<email>","subject":"<text>","account":"<email>","reason":"<reason>"}

6. Update State (per account)

Use the write tool (NOT edit) to write files. Read the current file first, modify in memory, then write the complete content back.

state.json: Update this account's lastRun key to current ISO UTC time — specifically state.lastRun[thisAccountEmail] = "<ISO UTC>". Increment global counters. If no emails were processed for this account, leave its lastRun unchanged (retains the old search window for next run).

seen.json:

• Read current content, add every thread ID processed this run with current timestamp, keyed by account
• Prune entries older than 24 hours (KEEP leaves threads unread, so keep seen entries long enough to avoid reprocessing)
• Use write to rewrite the complete file
• Structure: {"<account>": {"<threadId>": {"ts": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z"}}}

7. Log Decisions

Use exec with shell redirect to append, NOT the edit tool (which fails on JSONL because line content is always unique).

Read the current file, build the complete content with new lines appended, and write it back using the write tool. Or use exec with:

echo '{"ts":"...","decision":"KEPT",...}' >> email-triage/log.jsonl

Append one JSON line per decision (America/New_York timezone, newest at bottom):

{"ts":"2026-06-01T12:42:00-04:00","decision":"WAITING","threadId":"19e83f7cb645a38b","sender":"[e-mail]","subject":"Newsletter","account":"[e-mail]","reason":"newsletter, AI eval WAITING"}

DECISION ∈ {BLACKLIST, WHITELIST, KEPT, WAITING}

8. Archive

Use exec commands or the write tool (NOT edit) for all file operations:

• Use exec with python3 to read log.jsonl, filter entries older than 24h, append them to audit.jsonl, and overwrite log.jsonl with only entries from the last 24h
• Prune audit.jsonl entries older than 90 days using exec with python3
• Example approach: python3 -c "..." that reads both files, filters dates, and writes the results

---

Hard Rules

• Blacklist always wins. Check first.
• Whitelist protects. Never move whitelisted senders.
• Match sender email AND domain against lists (case-insensitive).
• No emails → exit without touching state.
• Never alert the user. Exit silently.
• Do NOT load USER.md/MEMORY.md unless body fetch is needed (step 4e ambiguous path).
• Never load the entire learned.db. Query it per-email with specific keywords only.
• Process ALL accounts from accounts.json.
• Never use the edit tool on JSON or JSONL files. Use write for complete rewrites and exec with shell >> for appending. The edit tool requires exact unique text matching, which fails on JSONL files where every line has unique timestamps.

---

Feedback Sweep (Daily Cron)

Runs once daily. Sweeps the full 24h log, checks label state, updates learned patterns in SQLite.

Workflow

1. Load files:

• email-triage/accounts.json — for gog --account flags and waitingLabel names
• email-triage/log.jsonl — all entries (last 24h)

2. For each entry in log.jsonl, per account:

First, resolve the waiting label's internal ID for this account (gog returns IDs like Label_6 for named labels):

GOG_OUTPUT=$(gog gmail labels list --account <email> 2>/dev/null)
WAITING_ID=$(echo "$GOG_OUTPUT" | grep -F "<waitingLabel>" | awk '{print $1}')

Then check the thread's current label state:

gog gmail thread get <threadId> --json --no-input --account <email> 2>/dev/null | python3 -c "
import sys,json
try:
    d=json.load(sys.stdin)
    msgs=d.get('thread',{}).get('messages',[])
    labels=msgs[0].get('labelIds',[]) if msgs else []
except Exception:
    labels=[]
print(json.dumps({'labels':labels}))
"

Compare the returned labelIds array against the logged decision, using $WAITING_ID for the waiting list check:

Logged	Should Have	If Instead Has	Action
KEPT	INBOX in labels	INBOX NOT in labels, or $WAITING_ID in labels	Wrong keep → demote concept
WAITING	$WAITING_ID in labels, INBOX NOT in labels	INBOX in labels	Wrong filter → promote concept
WAITING	$WAITING_ID in labels	TRASH in labels	Correct → reinforce concept
KEPT	INBOX in labels	UNREAD NOT in labels (read)	Good → reinforce concept lightly
KEPT	INBOX in labels	SENT in labels (replied)	Very good → reinforce concept strongly

3. Analyze the email's concept:

For each entry in the sweep, extract three dimensions from the logged data:

• Sender: bare email ([e-mail]) and domain (e.g. cotopaxi.com)
• Subject keywords: significant lowercase words from the subject, filtered of noise (stop words, numbers, dates). Include multi-word phrases that appear ("action required", "price drop", "weekly digest").
• Essence / email type: the category — e.g. marketing_promo, newsletter, bank_notification, travel_alert, receipt_confirmation, insurance_claim, social_media, personal_message, work_related, automated_digest, subscription, cold_outreach

4. Update all three dimensions in email-triage/learned.db:

Use the SQLite DB directly. Do NOT load the entire DB into context — use targeted queries.

For each correction found, run these SQL operations via python3:

Domain score update:

import sqlite3
db = sqlite3.connect('email-triage/learned.db')
db.execute('''
    INSERT INTO domains (domain, score, updates, confidence) VALUES (?, ?, 1, 0.55)
    ON CONFLICT(domain) DO UPDATE SET
        score = score + ?,
        updates = updates + 1,
        confidence = MIN(1.0, confidence + 0.05)
''', (domain, adjustment, adjustment))

Keyword score update (run per keyword found in subject):

for kw in keywords:
    db.execute('''
        INSERT INTO patterns (keyword, score, updates, confidence) VALUES (?, ?, 1, 0.55)
        ON CONFLICT(keyword) DO UPDATE SET
            score = score + ?,
            updates = updates + 1,
            confidence = MIN(1.0, confidence + 0.05)
    ''', (kw, kw_adjustment, kw_adjustment))

Essence type score update:

db.execute('''
    INSERT INTO essence_types (name, score, updates, confidence) VALUES (?, ?, 1, 0.55)
    ON CONFLICT(name) DO UPDATE SET
        score = score + ?,
        updates = updates + 1,
        confidence = MIN(1.0, confidence + 0.05)
''', (type_name, type_adjustment, type_adjustment))

Adjustment values:

• Wrong keep (should've been WAITING) → −0.5 for domain/essence, −0.3 distributed across keywords
• Wrong filter (should've been KEPT) → +0.5 for domain/essence, +0.3 distributed across keywords
• Correct decision with TRASH/SENT → +0.3
• Correct decision, just read → +0.1

After all corrections, apply decay and prune:

# Apply decay to scores AND confidence
meta = db.execute("SELECT key, value FROM metadata WHERE key IN ('cycle', 'decay_rate', 'version')").fetchall()
meta_dict = dict(meta)
decay = float(meta_dict.get('decay_rate', 0.97))
cycle = int(meta_dict.get('cycle', 0))

db.execute('UPDATE domains SET score = score * ?, confidence = confidence * ?', (decay, decay))
db.execute('UPDATE patterns SET score = score * ?, confidence = confidence * ?', (decay, decay))
db.execute('UPDATE essence_types SET score = score * ?, confidence = confidence * ?', (decay, decay))

# Prune low-confidence entries (decay ensures old/unused patterns eventually fall below threshold)
db.execute('DELETE FROM patterns WHERE confidence < 0.3')
db.execute('DELETE FROM domains WHERE confidence < 0.3')
db.execute('DELETE FROM essence_types WHERE confidence < 0.3')

# Increment cycle
db.execute("INSERT OR REPLACE INTO metadata (key, value) VALUES ('cycle', ?)", (str(cycle + 1),))
db.commit()

When the triage cron scores an email in Step 4d, it combines all three dimensions: domain score + keyword score + essence category score. The combined score determines the learned signal strength (≤ −1.0 → WAITING, ≥ 1.0 → KEEP).

5. Exit silently. Never alert the user.