10-min setup: connect Claude to Gmail
Before any of these 5 builds work, Claude needs to actually see your inbox. There are two ways to connect and they give Claude different powers — pick based on the build you want.
Claude chat = the regular Claude web app where you have conversations. You ask, it answers. On-demand.
Claude Cowork = Claude running on its own computer in the background, doing tasks for you while you sleep. Same Claude — different mode. Cowork sits in claude.ai/coworking.
Both can connect to Gmail. The build you're making decides which one to use.
Option A — Connect to Claude chat (for on-demand builds)
Open Claude.ai → Settings → Connectors
You need a paid plan (Pro, Max, or Team). Free won't show connectors.
Find "Gmail" in the directory and click Connect
Google's OAuth screen opens. Sign in with the Gmail you want Claude to read. Approve "read your email, manage drafts, send on your behalf" — you'll get nervous, but Claude doesn't auto-send anything you haven't asked for.
Test it: ask "what's the most important email in my inbox right now?"
If Claude answers with a real subject line and sender, you're wired. If it says "I can't access your email" — re-check the connector is toggled ON in settings.
Option B — Connect to Claude Cowork (for background builds)
Open claude.ai/coworking and start a Cowork session
Cowork is on the same paid plans (Pro, Max, Team). You'll see a virtual computer in the panel.
In the Cowork session: ask Claude to "open Gmail in the browser and log me in"
Cowork opens a browser inside its own computer and you sign in once. It remembers the login for the session. (Unlike Claude chat, Cowork uses the actual Gmail web UI rather than the API — it can do more, like clicking buttons, but you have to leave the session running.)
Set up a scheduled task
In Claude.ai → Settings → Scheduled tasks. Tell Claude when to run (e.g. every weekday at 6am) and what to do. Cowork wakes up, runs the task, drops the result wherever you told it (Slack, email, a Google Doc), goes back to sleep.
Claude chat (on-demand): Build 3 (reply drafter) and Build 4 (invoice chaser) — you fire them when you sit down to work.
Claude Cowork (background): Build 1 (morning brief), Build 2 (sub watcher), Build 5 (auto-labeller) — they run on schedules, no human in the loop.
If you're only going to set up ONE today, do Cowork — it's the one that gives you back time while you sleep.
Don't try to wire all five today. Pick the one that's actually costing you the most right now — money you're losing to forgotten subs (Build 2), time you're losing in your inbox every morning (Build 5), or the replies you're avoiding (Build 3). Get one working. The other four are easier once the first one is live.
Build 1 · Your 6am morning brief
Claude reads every email that came in overnight, checks your calendar for today, and writes you a short briefing of the 3 things that actually matter. Replaces the "scroll your inbox in bed" habit with something useful.
What you get: A 6am text or email with: 1) the calendar item that needs the most prep, 2) the inbox thread that's been waiting on you, 3) any time-sensitive thing (sponsor reply, client request, payment notification).
Time to ship: 20-30 minutes including testing.
The Cowork prompt to paste
Every weekday at 6am Australia/Perth time, open Gmail and Google Calendar. Read every email received since 6pm yesterday. Read every calendar event for today.
Write me a brief in this format:
1. THE PREP ONE — the calendar item today that needs the most prep (name, time, what to prep, link to most relevant past email about it).
2. THE WAITING ONE — the email thread someone is waiting on me to reply to that's been sitting longest (sender, what they want, what to say).
3. THE WATCH ONE — anything time-sensitive (payment, deadline, sponsor reply, client escalation) that I'd be cross to miss.
Skip newsletters, promos, calendar invites I've already RSVPd to, and anything from no-reply addresses. Keep the whole brief under 200 words. Send it as an email to brooke@wrightmode.com with subject "Morning brief — DD/MM".
Swap the delivery: instead of email → send to Slack, drop in a Google Doc, or text via Twilio (Cowork can do all three).
Add a fourth section "THE WIN" — anything good (a sale, a positive reply, a podcast pitch). Stops the brief feeling like a to-do list.
If you have an EA, CC them on the brief — they can action items 1 and 2 before you're even awake.
Build 2 · The subscription watcher
Tell Claude what tools you're paying for. It scans your inbox for renewals, price increases, and trial-ending warnings. Flags anything about to charge you. I caught $200/month I forgot I was paying for the first time I ran this.
What you get: A Friday email listing every renewal hitting next week, every price-hike notice you ignored, and the subs you haven't logged into in 90+ days.
Time to ship: 30 minutes including listing your subs.
Step one — list your subs
Make a quick list of everything you're paying for monthly or annually. Don't try to be comprehensive — write down what you remember. Claude will find the rest.
Example list: ChatGPT Pro, Claude Max, Notion Team, Cal.com Pro, Vercel Pro, Loom Business, ConvertKit/Kit, Adobe CC, Canva Pro, Apollo, Apify, Descript Creator, Make, n8n Cloud.
The Cowork prompt to paste
Every Friday at 4pm Australia/Perth, scan my Gmail for the last 30 days for any emails from the following senders or matching the following patterns:
[paste your list — sender domains work better than tool names. e.g. notion.so, openai.com, anthropic.com, vercel.com]
Pull out: (1) any "your card will be charged on X" notice for next week, (2) any "we're increasing prices" announcement, (3) any "your trial ends in X days" warning.
Also flag any subscription where I haven't logged in or received a usage email in 90+ days — possible candidates to cancel.
Format as a table. Email it to me with subject "Subs check — week of DD/MM".
Bank statements don't tell you a trial is ending in 3 days. They tell you AFTER the charge hits. Email scanning catches it before it bites. Combined with the 90-day "haven't used this" flag, you stop renewing things you forgot you owned.
Build 3 · Reply drafter that sounds like you
Claude reads your sent emails and learns how you actually write. Builds you a skill for drafting replies that sound like you, not a chatbot. Then a scheduled task runs overnight — drafts replies to anything sitting in your inbox so you wake up to a ready-to-send drafts folder. You review and hit send.
What you get: A reusable "reply as me" skill in Claude, and a drafts folder waking up populated every morning.
Time to ship: 1 hour — most of it is Claude reading your sent folder.
Part A — Build the voice skill (Claude chat)
Open my Gmail sent folder. Read the last 50 emails I've sent (skip auto-replies, marketing, and one-liners). Write me a voice profile that captures:
- How I open emails (greeting patterns, "hey" vs "hi" vs name-only)
- Sentence rhythm and average length
- Words I overuse
- How I sign off
- How I push back, decline, and ask for things
- Phrases that show up across multiple emails
Output as a markdown doc I can save as a Claude skill. Title it "reply-as-me".
Part B — Schedule overnight drafting (Cowork)
Every weekday at 11pm Australia/Perth, open Gmail. For every email in my inbox that:
- is a real human reply (not marketing, not auto-reply)
- has been sitting more than 24 hours
- I have not yet replied to
...draft a reply using the "reply-as-me" voice skill. SAVE EACH AS A DRAFT — do not send. Reply length should match how I usually reply (short emails get short replies, longer threads get longer ones). If you're unsure what I'd say, draft 2 options labelled "OPTION A / OPTION B" so I can pick.
At the end, send me a summary to brooke@wrightmode.com listing every draft created with subject + recipient.
The voice skill is the unlock. Without it, Claude writes like Claude. With it, Claude writes like you — because it learned from 50 of your real emails. The drafts feel like ones you'd send, which means you actually use them instead of rewriting from scratch.
Build 4 · The invoice chaser
Claude finds every invoice you sent, cross-checks payment notifications (Stripe, PayPal, bank deposit confirmations), drafts the chase email for anything overdue. You approve, it sends.
What you get: A list of unpaid invoices with chase emails drafted, ready to review and send.
Time to ship: 20 minutes for the chat version. 45 minutes for the scheduled Cowork version.
The Claude chat prompt (fire weekly)
Open my Gmail. Find every invoice I've sent in the last 90 days (search sent folder for attachments named "invoice" or subject lines containing "invoice", "payment due", or my invoice template prefix).
For each one, check whether I received a payment confirmation email after I sent it (from Stripe, PayPal, my bank, or the client confirming payment).
Make me a table:
| Client | Invoice # | Amount | Sent date | Due date | Paid? | Days overdue |
For any invoice that's overdue AND has no payment confirmation, DRAFT a polite chase email (not aggressive). Use the same tone I use in my "reply-as-me" voice skill if it exists.
Save chase emails as drafts in my outbox. Do not send.
Add escalation tiers: 1-7 days overdue gets a "friendly nudge" tone, 7-21 days gets "checking in" tone, 21+ gets "this needs sorting" tone. Tell Claude which template to use based on days overdue.
Pipe the table into a Google Sheet so you have a running cashflow picture, not just this week's snapshot.
If you use Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks, Cowork can also log into those and cross-check — but it's slower than scanning the email confirmations.
Build 5 · The auto-labeller
A scheduled task that runs every morning and tags every email by what it actually is — warm lead, current client, needs reply, FYI only, podcast pitch, finance, whatever categories matter to YOUR business. Your inbox becomes a sorted to-do list instead of a wall of unread. No more scrolling through 400 emails looking for that one thing.
What you get: Every email in your inbox tagged with a Gmail label that matches your real categories. You can filter "needs reply" and only see the 6 things that actually want you.
Time to ship: 30 minutes — most of it is deciding the categories.
Step one — decide YOUR labels
This is the part people skip and regret. Generic labels ("important", "later") are useless. Your labels should match how you actually think about your business.
My set (steal it or remix it): warm-lead, current-client, needs-reply, fyi-only, podcast-pitch, finance, sponsor-techella, sub-renewal, partner-collab, member-question.
Create the labels in Gmail first (Settings → Labels → Create new label). Claude can't make labels via API — only apply existing ones.
The Cowork prompt to paste
Every weekday at 5:30am Australia/Perth, open Gmail. Look at every email in my inbox that doesn't already have a label.
Tag each with EXACTLY ONE of these labels based on the rules below:
- warm-lead: someone asking about working with me but not yet a client (consult enquiries, "how do I work with you", referral intros)
- current-client: anyone in [list current client domains, e.g. @bloom-mechanics.com.au, @monday-haircare.com]
- needs-reply: a real human asked me a question and is waiting on me
- fyi-only: I'm CC'd or it's an update I should know but don't need to action
- podcast-pitch: someone wants me on their show or wants to be on mine
- finance: invoices in, payment confirmations, accountant, tax
- sub-renewal: subscription renewal notices, price changes, trial endings
- partner-collab: someone wanting to do a joint thing (workshop, course, collab post)
- member-question: someone in my Wright Mode membership asking something
- sponsor-techella: anything about Techella sponsorship
If an email genuinely doesn't fit ANY label, leave it untagged so I can review what's slipping through.
At the end, send me a quick summary email: how many emails labelled per category, plus any unlabelled ones for me to review.
Once your inbox is labelled, set up Gmail filters so labelled emails skip the inbox and only show when you click the label. Suddenly your "inbox" is just warm-lead and needs-reply — the two labels you actually have to act on. Everything else lives where you can find it but isn't in your face.
Which one to build first
The trick is building ONE first, not all five today. Pick the one that's actually costing you the most right now:
You're losing money to forgotten subs
→ Build 2 (sub watcher). Pays for itself in week one. Mine flagged $200/month I didn't know I was paying.
Your inbox gives you the ick every morning
→ Build 5 (auto-labeller). Clears the noise so you can see what actually needs you.
You're sitting on unread replies for weeks
→ Build 3 (reply drafter). Removes the "blank page" friction from replying.
You start every day reactive, not intentional
→ Build 1 (morning brief). Replaces the inbox-scroll-in-bed habit with a 200-word read.
You have invoices going unpaid and you can't keep up
→ Build 4 (invoice chaser). Cashflow lever. Stops invoices ageing into write-offs.
You're starting from scratch and just want a quick win
→ Build 2 then Build 5. The first one saves you money, the second one gives you breathing room. Then come back for 1, 3, 4.
Your inbox is the single richest training dataset you'll ever own. Every reply you've ever sent is a sample of how you think, how you decide, how you talk. Connect Claude to it once and you've turned years of email into an assistant that knows your business.
The women in Wright Mode wire these builds together. Now you have the playbook too.
Ready to wire the whole stack?
The 5 builds are the start. Here's where they connect to everything else.
Wright Mode Membership
Where these builds get wired live, with a room of women founders shipping real AI workflows together. Live calls, templates, ongoing build support.
Claude Masterclass
The full Claude system — not just the inbox builds. Prompting fundamentals, voice docs, projects, Cowork, the whole stack I run Wright Mode on.
Coding Camp
A full day building inbox stacks like this (and more) in person. Gold Coast, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne. For non-tech founders who want to build, not just consume.