How to Set Up Your First AI Email Agent

Email is the backbone of most business communication — and for most people, it's also their biggest time drain. An AI email agent can triage your inbox, draft replies, and surface what actually needs your attention, giving you back hours every week. This guide walks you through setting one up with OpenClaw from scratch.

What You'll Need

✅An OpenClaw account (free tier works)
✅A Gmail or Outlook inbox
✅About 30 minutes of setup time
✅A rough sense of how you categorise emails
✅Optional: access to a shared team inbox

Step-by-Step Guide

Install OpenClaw and connect your inbox

Download and install OpenClaw on your Mac or PC. Once running, navigate to Settings → Integrations and connect your Gmail or Outlook account. Grant the necessary permissions — OpenClaw needs read access to classify emails and write access to draft replies. Your inbox connection will appear green once active.

Define your email categories

Open the Email Agent skill configuration and define 5–7 categories that match how you actually think about email. Common examples: Urgent/Action Required, Client Emails, Invoices & Finance, Newsletters, Internal Team, and FYI Only. The more specific and personal your categories, the more accurate the triage will be from day one.

Configure your triage rules

For each category, describe what makes an email belong there — sender patterns, subject keywords, and typical content. For example: 'Client Emails = from known client domains or containing project names'. The agent uses these as training signals. You can also set rules like 'auto-archive anything from no-reply@ addresses older than 24 hours'.

Set up your morning briefing

Configure the morning briefing in HEARTBEAT.md. Choose your delivery time (7am is popular), briefing format (summary vs. full list), and where to receive it — Slack, email, or in-app. The briefing will show your top 5 urgent items, a categorised inbox count, and suggested replies for any messages that have been waiting more than 24 hours.

Run your first triage and review the results

Trigger a manual triage run from the OpenClaw dashboard. The agent will process your inbox and show you its categorisation decisions. Review the first 20–30 items and correct any that are wrong using the thumbs up/down buttons. These corrections train the model and typically improve accuracy to 90%+ within the first week.

Enable auto-archive and draft replies

Once you're happy with the accuracy, enable auto-archive for your lowest-priority categories (newsletters, FYI) and turn on draft-reply suggestions for high-frequency senders. Drafts appear in a review queue — you approve or edit before anything is sent. Most users find they can process a full day of email in under 10 minutes once the agent is trained.

💡Pro Tip

Start with a strict review period (approve every action manually for the first 3 days) before enabling any automation. The extra time upfront pays off in a model that's precisely calibrated to your inbox — not a generic one.

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