YouTubeEducational / authority
How To Make Claude Read and Write Your Emails
Step 1: Connect Gmail to Claude
In Claude, go to settings and connect your Gmail account. This lets Claude read your sent emails and your inbox, and create drafts on your behalf.
Step 2: Teach Claude your voice and build the skill
This is a two stage prompt. Stage 1 gets Claude to read your last 200 sent emails and write up a voice profile. Stage 2 turns that into a reusable skill.
Paste this into Claude:
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I want you to build a skill called "email-drafts" that drafts replies to my connected inbox every morning in my own voice. Do this in two stages.
STAGE 1: Learn my voice
Read my last 200 sent emails from my Gmail account (skip anything automated, mass-sent, or under 15 words). For each one, note:
- How I open emails differently for clients vs prospects vs internal team vs vendors/ad platform reps
- My sign-off style and how it changes by audience
- Sentence length and structure (short and direct, or more explanatory)
- How I say no, push back, or deliver bad news
- How I chase someone who hasn't replied
- Phrases and words I use often
- Phrases I never use (e.g. filler openers like "I hope this email finds you well")
- Spelling convention
- Punctuation habits, note in particular whether I use em dashes (I don't, so never use them in drafts)
Write this up as a voice profile and save it as references/voice-profile.md inside the skill folder. Show it to me before moving on to Stage 2 so I can correct anything that's off.
STAGE 2: Build the skill
Once I've confirmed the voice profile, create SKILL.md for "email-drafts" that does the following when run:
1. Check my inbox for emails received since the last run (or in the last 24 hours if it's the first run).
2. Draft a reply for anything that's routine and doesn't need my personal judgement, using the voice profile. Save every draft to the Gmail thread as a draft only, never send anything.
3. Do NOT draft replies for anything involving contracts, money, disputes, legal threats, or negotiation. Flag these instead with a one-line note on why it needs me directly.
4. Compile a short morning summary: how many drafts were created, how many were flagged, grouped by category. Keep it under a 2-minute read.
Formatting rules for every draft, no exceptions:
- Local spelling for my country
- No em dashes, ever
- Sentence case body copy, no padded openers or closers
- Lean and direct, get to the point in the first line
- Match formality to category (warmer with clients, brisk with platform reps, casual with team)
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Step 3: Check the voice profile
Claude will show you the voice profile before it builds anything. Read through it and correct anything that's off. This is the most important step. The better the voice profile, the more the drafts sound like you and not like a generic assistant.
Once it's right, confirm and Claude will build the skill and save it.
Step 4: Set up a scheduled task in Claude Cowork
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Go to Claude Cowork and create a new scheduled task. Set it to run every morning, before you'd normally start checking email.
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Step 5: Use this prompt for the scheduled task
Run the email-drafts skill on my inbox. Check for anything received since yesterday's run. Draft replies for anything routine, flag anything involving contracts, money, disputes, or negotiation for me to handle directly. Save all drafts to Gmail, don't send anything. Give me the morning summary.
Step 6: What happens next
Every morning, Claude goes into your inbox, drafts replies to everything routine in your own voice, flags anything that needs your judgement, and leaves you a short summary. You open Gmail, review the drafts, and hit send. No more starting your day from a blank inbox.
Why it worksThe 37-second Short sells one crisp outcome in the first frame, ‘Turn Claude into your AI personal email assistant’, then keeps the video lightweight while the description holds the complete six-step implementation. The copy-paste prompt removes nearly all effort and includes trust-building guardrails such as draft-only behaviour, voice review and exclusions for contracts or money. It has 1,394 visible views and 14 likes.