Email Triage Agent: AI-powered inbox management (Tier 1 use case)

[kovtcharov]

Sub-tasks

• feat(email): Gmail integration for Email Triage Agent #962 — Gmail integration for Email Triage Agent
• feat(email): Outlook/Exchange integration for Email Triage Agent #963 — Outlook/Exchange integration for Email Triage Agent

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Problem

Email management is the #1 use case in the OpenClaw strategy's Tier 1 priority list — the intersection of always-on operation and sensitive data where local hardware has the strongest advantage. GAIA has no email agent.

Strategic Context

From the OpenClaw strategy (§9.5 Use Case Prioritization):

Email triage and management — Always-on: Yes, Sensitive Data: Yes, AMD Local Advantage: Very strong (cost + privacy) — Tier 1: Lead with

From §3 (What People Build):

"Clear 4,000+ emails overnight; daily morning briefs via Telegram; voice-to-journal knowledge capture" — Highest adoption category

This is the killer demo: plug in Agent Computer, wake up to a triaged inbox. Zero cloud cost, zero data exposure.

Proposed Features

1. Email connection — IMAP/OAuth for Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo (local credentials, no cloud relay)
2. Triage rules — AI-learned categories: urgent, actionable, informational, spam
3. Daily digest — Morning summary of overnight email activity
4. Draft responses — Agent drafts replies for urgent items, user approves
5. Auto-archive — Low-priority emails archived after configurable delay
6. Privacy guarantee — All processing local, emails never leave device

Dependencies

• Always-on agent: heartbeat, scheduler, and event hooks (autonomy engine) #634 (autonomy engine) — scheduled triage runs
• Messaging adapters: Telegram, Discord, Slack integration #635 (messaging adapters) — deliver digest via Telegram/Discord
• Memory system (v0.22.5) — learn user preferences over time

Acceptance Criteria

• Connect Gmail/Outlook via IMAP or OAuth
• Automatic categorization of incoming email
• Morning digest summary
• Draft response suggestions for urgent items
• All processing runs locally — zero cloud API calls for email content

[kovtcharov]

Scope clarification: split between v0.20.0 and v0.23.0

Per the consumer-adoption review (#875 thread), the morning-brief / email-triage consumer use cases are v0.20.0 critical-path but the full GAIA-native Email Triage Agent described here is correctly scoped to v0.23.0 (depends on autonomy engine).

To unblock v0.20.0 without conflating with this issue:

• v0.20.0 path = email triage as a skill (in the starter pack Starter skill pack: 10 agentskills.io skills demonstrating the platform #893) using a Gmail MCP server from the curated catalogue (Agent UI: Curated MCP server catalogue with one-click enable/disable #714). Scheduler (Minimal scheduler: gaia schedule CLI + cron-based skill dispatch #892) fires the skill; it lists new email via Gmail MCP, ranks by importance using memory (PR feat(memory): agent memory v2 — second brain with hybrid search, LLM extraction, and observability dashboard #606), drafts via the model. No always-on agent loop required for the V1 experience.

• v0.23.0 path = this issue's full Email Triage Agent — proactive, always-on, autonomous classification, learns from user feedback, uses event hooks and sub-agents.

The v0.20.0 starter-skill version is sufficient to demo the use case and let consumers experience email triage. The full agent is the v0.23.0 step-up.