Would you like to hire someone to manage email, prioritize responses, and take action on your behalf?
Most people look to an AI email assistant; there are tons of articles online about this. The problem with the advice they stop at reading and summarizing, or never tells you how to do it.
Everyone's building an AI email assistant to fix it, and most fall into one of two camps: reactive tools that draft when you ask, or autonomous agents that run on autopilot once you trust them.
The capability is here; the approach is what needs to change.
You’ve heard talk about AI Employees; one of mine is called Sarah. One of her job responsibilities is to triage emails, assign requests to other AI Teams, and respond to inbound messages when her teammates deliver the work back to her.
Sarah doesn't just triage emails.
Every morning, before I'm at my desk, she reads my inbox, checks my calendar, and reviews my pipeline.
Three sources, one picture: what's urgent, what's already scheduled, what's already in motion.
That's the job. Not "answer everything." Not "draft everything." Know what matters this morning and hand me exactly that.
On the email: she reads what comes in. The way Sarah works is she has her own inbox and has access to my inbox.
She sends me briefings and reports. She flags what needs me. And she works on responding to emails I send her, or she is sent directly to work on.
A few months in, she caught something I hadn't: a pattern across three deals that all pointed at the same bottleneck.
She didn't just summarize it.
She recommended I stop selling engagements one at a time and start staffing them digitally instead.
That call was right. That's the gap between a tool that processes and a teammate that thinks.
You may be asking yourself, that sounds great, Marvin, but I have no idea how to get started.
She triages my email so I don't have to.
Why one AI assistant isn't enough
Knowledge workers lose roughly a quarter of their workweek to email. Everyone's building an AI email assistant to fix it, and most fall into one of two camps: reactive tools that draft when you ask, or autonomous agents that run on autopilot once you trust them.
What Sarah does
Sarah not only triages my email.
Every morning, before I'm at my desk, she reads my inbox, checks my calendar, and reviews my pipeline.
Three sources, one picture: what's urgent, what's already scheduled, what's already in motion. That's the job. Not "answer everything." Not "draft everything." Know what actually matters this morning and hand me exactly that.
She reads what comes in. She answers what she's cleared to answer. She flags what needs me. And when she's not sure, she never guesses. She asks.
A few months in, she caught something I hadn't: a pattern across three deals that all pointed at the same bottleneck.
She didn't just summarize it. She recommended I stop selling engagements one at a time and start staffing them digitally instead. That call was right. That's the gap between a tool that processes and a teammate that thinks.
Build your own in 9 questions
Where she looks: whose email is she reading, yours, the team's, or her own?
Who she is: does she sign as herself, as you, or for the team?
What she answers: what can she handle alone, and where does she hand off?
When she asks you: what needs your OK first, where does it wait, and what happens if you forget it?
Where emails go: what gets routed to someone else instead of getting a reply?
When she checks: how often does she look, and what slows her down?
When she's confused: what happens when she isn't sure? She never guesses. She asks.
How she connects: which tools read and send the email — Gmail, Outlook, Resend?
What is her schedule: when does she respond, and what are the exceptions?
The Build
Open a chat and add this prompt
"How would you build an inbound response email system for me? Here are my requirements and constraints [list them]." Paste in the 9 questions and have it interview you for the answers.
End with a prompt ready for Codex or a Claude Code Routine: the logic files it needs, and which connectors to use to make it run Gmail, Outlook, or Resend for send and receive, plus whatever holds your calendar and pipeline. Before you close the chat, ask it for step-by-step setup instructions for every connector on the list.
Nine questions, one build prompt, one teammate who knows when to stop and ask.
Want ideas on building and managing AI Teams on your terms?
Join THINK School, my Skool community, and put your Sarah to work.
Marvin