AI for email delegation

Delegating email used to mean sharing a password and hoping. With Sortd, your assistant works the inbox on a board you can see — triaging, drafting, briefing — and a human stays on every send.

What you'll end up with

A triaged inbox: what needs you, what's delegated, what's just noise — decided and visible.
Replies pre-drafted in your tone for the routine mail; you approve in minutes.
A morning brief of the five things that actually need your attention.

Before you start

Sortd set up in Gmail — a personal board (say My Inbox) with lists like Needs me, Delegated, Waiting, Handled.
Your assistant connected — two minutes, one browser approval: Connect your AI. Everything below works in Claude, ChatGPT, or any connected assistant.
The right permissions — when you connect you tick what the assistant may do — send permissions start unticked. For this guide: reading email, reading and updating the board, and preparing drafts (drafts never send by themselves).

Set it up by talking to your assistant

Each step is something you type (or say) to your assistant — copy them as they are, or change the names to match your own boards and lists. You don't need to know what happens behind the scenes, but we explain it anyway.

1. Set the triage rules in plain words

You explain once, like briefing a new assistant.

When you triage my inbox: anything from my leadership team or clients goes to Needs me. Scheduling, invoices and routine requests go to Delegated. Newsletters and notifications — skip. When unsure, Needs me.

What happens: The rules live in your instruction — refine them any time in the same plain language.

2. The triage run

The inbox becomes a decision already made.

Triage today's mail onto My Inbox using my rules. For everything in Delegated, draft a reply in my voice — brief, warm, direct. Leave all drafts for approval.

What happens: Mail becomes sorted cards; routine replies wait as drafts. Your actual inbox time becomes approve-and-send.

3. The morning brief

What an excellent human assistant would put on your desk.

Give me my morning brief: the five most important emails and why, anything that became urgent overnight, and what's in Waiting that I should chase.

What happens: A prioritised brief from live inbox and board state — read it with the first coffee.

4. Close the loops

Waiting-on-others is where delegated work quietly dies.

Check Waiting: if they replied, move it back to Needs me and tell me. If it's been a week, draft a gentle chase.

What happens: Loops get closed or chased — nothing depends on you remembering.

Put it on autopilot

Once a run works when you ask for it, schedule it — triage runs through the day; the brief lands each morning.

Every two hours on weekdays, triage my inbox using my rules and draft the routine replies. At 7:45 each morning, send my brief: top five, new urgencies, and what to chase.

Claude (Cowork scheduled tasks) and ChatGPT (scheduled tasks) can both do this — cadences, tips and more recipes are on AI Schedule.

You stay in control

Drafts by default. Unless you granted a send permission, the assistant can only prepare replies — they wait in Gmail for a human to send.
Everything is visible. Every card the assistant creates or moves shows up on the board instantly, exactly as if a teammate did it — same statuses, same history, same audit trail.
Easy to undo, easy to unplug. Moves and statuses can be changed back on the board, and you can disconnect the assistant at any time from the same place you connected it.

More: AI for a shared team inbox · every action the assistant can take, with example prompts: AI Reference · all use cases: AI guides