Gmail AI Triage — Tony Adijah

Target Audience

Who Is This For?

Professionals drowning in email who need automated triage.

Founders who want to prioritize urgent messages automatically.

Freelancers managing multiple client threads simultaneously.

Privacy Advocates wanting local AI without data leaving their machine.

Requirements

What You'll Need

Gmail Account with OAuth credentials (read, modify, compose).

Ollama running locally with a pulled model (Mistral, Llama3, etc.).

n8n Instance (Self-hosted recommended for Ollama connectivity).

Google Sheets (Optional) for logging and analytics.

How It Works

Workflow Breakdown

From inbox trigger to labeled thread and reply draft.

1

Gmail Trigger & Extract

Watches inbox every 30 mins. Trigger detects new unread emails. The Extract node parses sender, subject, body, and metadata into clean fields for processing.

Gmail Trigger Parse Data Metadata

Gmail Trigger

Watch Unread Emails

Extract Data

Subject, Body, Sender

2

AI Classification

Ollama processes content locally. The AI analyzes the email and returns a structured classification: Category (Urgent, Newsletter, etc.), Priority, Confidence Score, Summary, and a Smart Reply Draft.

Ollama LLM JSON Output Zero API Cost

AI Classifier

Mistral / Llama3 (Local)

🔴

Urgent

📋

Action

📰

Newsletter

3

Smart Router & Actions

A Switch node routes emails to one of 6 paths. Gmail Label nodes apply the correct tag. Reply Draft nodes generate responses for urgent items. All data is logged to Google Sheets.

Router Labeling Drafts

Draft Reply

Ready for Review in Gmail

Stack

Tools Powering This

n8n

Orchestration

Ollama

Local AI

Gmail

Inbox

Google Sheets

Logging

Implementation

Setup Steps

1

Gmail OAuth

Connect your Google account. Grant read, modify, and compose permissions to allow labeling and drafting.

2

Create Labels

In Gmail, create 6 labels: 🔴 Urgent, 📋 Action Required, 💬 Follow-up, 📰 Newsletter, 🤖 Automated, 🚫 Spam-Promo.

3

Get Label IDs

Use the Gmail API or n8n's "Get Many Labels" operation to find the unique ID for each label. Update the workflow nodes.

4

Ollama Setup

Ensure Ollama is running locally (localhost:11434) and pull your model (e.g., ollama pull mistral).

5

Sheets Config (Optional)

Connect Google Sheets for logging. Create columns: Date, From, Subject, Category, Priority, Summary, Has Reply Draft, etc.

6

Test

Send yourself test emails (urgent request, newsletter, promo). Run the workflow manually to verify classification and labeling.

Ready?

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Workflow Template

Automate your inbox triage with local AI. No API keys, no monthly fees.

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