The Smart Inbox Agent For Smart People
The Inbox Should Help You………….
Rather than Make You Die 🥲
The inbox is where productivity often dies a slow death buried under unread newsletters, sales updates, internal loops, and client pings. For me, it was about time and attention, both were criping up me.
To explore Agentic AI workflows practically, i built a foundational system called the Smart Inbox Agent: a minimal yet powerful automation that cuts through inbox noise and surfaces only what truly matters. Today, this pipeline saves me 30 to 50 minutes every single day not by deleting emails, but by reframing how i interacts with them.
This wasn’t just an automation experiment, it was the first step toward designing attention-aware systems where agents reduce cognitive load and systems deliver meaningful signals.
What
Was Built
Intent-Based Email Classification
Every new email was passed through an intent classifier that tagged it as a Lead, Client Update, Newsletter, or Internal Info. This helped me to prioritize based on real business relevance.
OpenAI-Powered Email Summarization
Using GPT-4, emails were distilled into short, actionable summaries. Each summary preserved the sender, topic, urgency, and call-to-action allowing me to decide quickly without opening my inbox.
Telegram Bot Notification System
A custom Telegram bot was built to deliver categorized summaries directly to my telegram. This reduced notification overload and made critical insights accessible in real time.
24/7 Hosted Automation using n8n & Hostinger
The entire pipeline was deployed on a Hostinger cloud VPS, ensuring round-the-clock uptime. n8n was used as the low-code automation engine to maintain modular and scalable workflows.
The
Challenges
Inbox Overwhelm
With dozens of emails pouring in daily from tools, clients, and subscriptions the signal-to-noise ratio was breaking my focus. Important updates were getting buried, creating mental clutter and decision fatigue.
No Context Switching Control
Even skimming subject lines meant constant context-switching. Every inbox check disrupted deep work, leading to productivity dips and fragmented attention across tasks.
No “Light-Touch” Filtering
Conventional filters only moved emails from folder to folder. I needed smart, real-time insight not rules-based sorting to know what is required to my attention and why.
Desire to Explore Agentic Thinking
This wasn’t just automation for automation’s sake, this was about building a real use case for how agents assist thinking and doing.
Our
Approach
💡 1. Categorize by Intent
Each incoming email is scanned by an AI agent (via OpenAI API) which classifies it into:
Client
Lead
Newsletter
Update/Info
Monetary
This agent operates asynchronously using n8n, triggered automatically when new emails arrive via an email node.
💡 2. Summarize with Precision
The content of the email is summarized into a 3 to 4 sentence summary using OpenAI’s GPT engine. This summary contains:
The subject
The sender
The core message
The urgency level (if any)
💡 3. Real-Time Signal on Telegram
A custom Telegram bot built via Telegram API delivers this summary to my personal Telegram inbox in real time ensuring i gets the signal, not the noise.
💡 4. 24/7 Cloud Hosting
The full pipeline is deployed on Hostinger Cloud VPS, enabling 24/7 uptime for inbound and outbound triggers without local dependencies.
The
Impact
🕒 30–50 Minutes Saved Daily
By offloading reading, context-gathering, and triage to the agent, I regained mental bandwidth and reduced email-related micro-decisions.
📲 Near-Zero Notification Fatigue
Only relevant, summarized, categorized messages hit my Telegram inbox completely bypassing email distraction loops.
🧠 Kickstarted Agentic Workflow Thinking
This project laid the groundwork for more advanced systems that i am building now:
Agents that draft replies
Agents that creates the task in my notion
Agents that update CRMs from emails
Agents that handle lead qualification autonomously
🚀 Scalable Architecture
The system is modular, making it easy to expand into:
Slack or WhatsApp notifications
Draft response automation
Human-in-the-loop review + send flows
Real experiences from professionals I've collaborated with across projects, industries, and innovation journeys.
Here is a glimpse of how I have helped businesses grow, optimise, and innovate.
