Zero-Trust Email Triage

AI is fast enough that if it sees an email, it can respond quickly. The failure mode is not slow response — it is surfacing noise that drowns out real signal. This skill teaches agents to classify email by sender trust, not by arrival order or self-claimed urgency.

The Problem

Most email agents treat all unread email as equally important. This creates two failure modes:

1. Noise escalation — a marketing email from an unknown sender with "URGENT" in the subject gets surfaced alongside a client asking for help
2. Buried signal — a partner reply sits unread for days because it arrived between 50 GitHub notifications

Both failures damage trust. The fix is sender-based prioritization.

Primary Classifier: Sender Trust Tiers

Classify every email by who sent it, not what it says:

Tier 1 — Paying Customers and Active Clients

Surface immediately. These are relationships where a missed email damages trust and revenue.