You run thisWritten for Claude

Build me an inbox triage system

Founder, Automation Squad

Generic inbox-zero advice ignores that everyone's actual failure mode is different — some people over-triage, some under-respond. This prompt makes the model diagnose your specific pattern from your own description before prescribing anything, so the system fits the problem you actually have.

The prompt

I get too much email and I'm making bad triage decisions by instinct — some things sit for days that should've been 30 seconds, other things get a reply they didn't need. Help me build a simple, written triage system I can actually follow, not a productivity philosophy.

Ask me nothing yet — first, here's how I described my inbox in one paragraph: [paste a description: roughly how many emails/day, who they're mostly from, what usually goes wrong — things you miss, or things you over-respond to]

Based on that, give me:
1. Four categories max (not seven — I won't use seven), each with a one-line rule for what qualifies
2. For each category: reply now / reply today / reply this week / no reply needed, and why
3. Three sender or subject-line patterns I should auto-deprioritize, based on what I described
4. One thing in my current habit (as I described it) that's actively costing me time, named specifically
5. A single test I can run for one week to see if this actually works, with one metric to check at the end

Keep the whole system on one page. If it doesn't fit on one page, it won't get used.

Copy it, paste it, run it. Nothing here is gated.

More for the same job

Written for Claude as of August 2026. Models change — if this stops working the way it should, that is worth telling us about.