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The AI Personal Assistant organizes your inbox for you. Describe how you want your email handled in plain English, and it labels, archives, forwards, and drafts replies automatically as mail arrives. Open Assistant in the left sidebar or visit Assistant. You can also create and manage rules through AI Chat.

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Getting Started

The video uses Gmail. Outlook users follow the same Assistant flow; label actions become Outlook categories, and messages can be moved to Outlook folders. See Using Outlook.

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Create Rules from Instructions

  1. Open Assistant.
  2. Describe how you want your email handled in the instruction box.
  3. Review the rules generated from your instructions.
  4. Save the rules.
Use Add rule manually when you want to build the condition and actions yourself.

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How Rules Work

Each rule has a condition and one or more actions. When an incoming email matches the condition, Inbox Zero performs the configured actions. AI Rules

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Conditions

Conditions can use AI instructions, static fields, or both.
  • AI condition: Describe the meaning of the emails that should match, such as Apply this rule if this email is asking me to set up a call.
  • Static condition: Match text in From, To, or Subject, such as From contains @example.com.

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Actions

A rule can contain multiple actions. Available actions can vary by email provider and connected apps:
  • Label
  • Move to folder
  • Archive
  • Delete
  • Draft replies
  • Send replies
  • Forward
  • Send email
  • Mark as read
  • Star
  • Mark as spam
  • Add to digest
  • Call webhook
  • Add Todoist task (requires a connected Todoist integration). Leave the task and description blank and the AI writes them from each matching email, or type your own wording to use it as-is.
  • Notify in a connected Slack, Teams, or Telegram account
  • Deliver a draft reply to a connected messaging account for review
  • Notify the sender
See Email Digest, Call Webhook, and Delayed Actions for actions that need additional configuration.

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AI-Generated Content

For actions with editable content, put an AI instruction inside double curly braces:
Inbox Zero generates the content inside each {{...}} placeholder from the email context. Text outside the placeholders remains as written.

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Delayed Execution

Supported actions can run after a delay instead of immediately. Open the action’s More options menu and choose Add delay. Delays can range from 1 minute to 90 days. See Delayed Actions.

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Apply to Threads

When Apply to Threads is disabled, the rule runs only on the first message in a conversation and is skipped for later replies. This is useful for standalone mail such as newsletters or receipts.

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When Multiple Rules Can Apply

By default, the assistant chooses one rule per email. Enable multi-rule selection in Assistant > Settings when you want several rules to match the same message.

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Learned Patterns

The assistant learns from corrections and from how you handle messages.
  • Open a rule to review its learned patterns.
  • Add or remove sender and domain patterns when you need explicit control.
  • Use the History tab’s Fix action to explain an incorrect match and update the rule.

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Test Rules

Open the Test tab to run your rules against an email or free-form text. Test All evaluates the selected email against all rules without applying the actions. Test Rules

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Assistant Settings

Open Assistant > Settings to configure behavior shared across rules, such as auto-drafting, writing style, and the email digest. See Assistant Settings.