Email Triage System Skill

Inboxes overflow because every message gets the same treatment: opened, half-read, left "for later" — and later compounds. Triage replaces reading with deciding: every message gets exactly one of four verbs on first touch, the two-minute rule handles the small stuff instantly, and the system runs on a cadence measured in minutes per day, not heroic weekend purges.

What This Skill Produces

• The triage pass — the current backlog sorted into the four verbs, oldest-first batches
• The four-verb rules — archive / reply-now / task / park, with the decision test for each
• The minimal structure — 3–4 labels maximum; folders are where email goes to die
• The daily cadence — two fixed windows, timeboxed, with the backlog-never-returns rule

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The inbox state — count, oldest unread, and the honest description ("4,000, mostly newsletters" vs. "200, mostly real")
• The role's email reality — customer-facing (reply SLAs matter) vs. internal (batching is fine)
• Past attempts — what system died before and why; the new one must not repeat its failure mode

Framework: The Four Verbs