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Inbox Zero Agent Team - AI Email Pipeline | Founder OS

Inbox Zero Agent Team

Pipeline: Sequential email processing from triage through archive recommendations

What Does the Inbox Zero Team Do?

The Inbox Zero agent team transforms your email inbox from a wall of unread messages into a structured, prioritized action plan. Four specialized agents process your email in sequence, each one building on the previous agent's output. By the end of the pipeline, every email is categorized, action items are extracted into Notion, draft responses are written, and archive-safe messages are flagged for cleanup.

By default, /founder-os:inbox:triage runs in single-agent mode: a fast, lightweight pass that categorizes and prioritizes your inbox. When you add the --team flag, the full four-agent pipeline activates, giving you action extraction, response drafting, labeling, and archive recommendations to the triage results. Use single-agent mode for a quick morning scan; use --team when you want to process your inbox end-to-end and finish with an empty inbox.

The pipeline is strictly sequential. Each agent's output feeds directly into the next agent's input as structured JSON. If any step fails, the pipeline halts -- partial results from upstream agents are preserved, but downstream agents do not run.

Which Agents Are in the Inbox Zero Team?

Agent Role What It Does
triage-agent Step 1 Fetches unread emails via gws CLI, classifies each into one of 5 categories (action_required, waiting_on, fyi, newsletter, promotions), assigns Eisenhower-matrix priority scores (1-5), and sets needs_response and archivable flags
action-agent Step 2 Filters for actionable emails, extracts structured action items with verb-first titles, creates Notion tasks in the "[FOS] Tasks" database with Type="Email Task", and links to CRM contacts/companies when matched
response-agent Step 3 Drafts contextual email replies for all needs_response emails, matches sender tone, assigns confidence scores, and saves drafts to Notion "[FOS] Content" database (not directly to Gmail) for human review
archive-agent Step 4 Applies Gmail labels based on triage categories, determines archive eligibility, produces archive recommendations (never auto-archives), compiles the final pipeline report with a needs_attention list of high-priority items

Data Flow

Unread Emails → [Triage: categorize + prioritize] → [Action: extract tasks → Notion]
             → [Response: draft replies → Notion] → [Archive: label + recommend + report]

Each agent passes through the complete email dataset plus its own enrichments. The triage-agent's categorized list flows into the action-agent, which adds an action_items array. The response-agent receives both and adds a drafts array. The archive-agent receives everything and produces the final pipeline report with archive recommendations and the needs_attention summary.

When Should I Use the --team Flag?

Use the full pipeline when you want a full inbox processing session -- typically once or twice a day. Specific scenarios where --team shines:

  • Morning inbox zero ritual. You have 50-200 unread emails and want every one categorized, tasks created, replies drafted, and low-priority messages flagged for archiving.
  • Post-travel catch-up. You've been offline for a few days. Run --team --hours=72 --max=200 to process everything that accumulated.
  • End-of-day wrap-up. Before signing off, process the afternoon's emails so you start the next day clean.

Skip --team when you just need a quick priority check -- the default single-agent triage gives you a categorized view in seconds without creating tasks or drafting replies.

Example

/founder-os:inbox:triage --team --hours=24

Here is what happens step by step:

  1. Triage agent fetches the last 24 hours of unread email via gws gmail, categorizes 87 emails into 5 buckets (12 action_required, 8 waiting_on, 23 fyi, 15 newsletter, 29 promotions), assigns priority scores, and flags 10 as needing a response.
  2. Action agent filters to the 12 action_required emails plus any others marked needs_response. It extracts 15 action items, checks Notion for duplicates (skips 2), and creates 13 new tasks in "[FOS] Tasks" with source email links. Where sender domains match CRM companies, it populates the Company relation.
  3. Response agent drafts replies for the 10 emails flagged needs_response. Each draft is tone-matched to the sender, given a confidence score, and saved to Notion "[FOS] Content" with status "To Review." Two low-confidence drafts are flagged for manual attention.
  4. Archive agent applies Gmail labels to all 87 emails (Action Required, Waiting On, FYI, Newsletter, Promotions). It recommends 44 emails for archiving (all promotions and newsletters) while keeping action_required, waiting_on, and VIP sender emails in the inbox. The final report surfaces 5 high-priority items in the needs_attention list.

You review the drafts in Notion, approve or edit them, then run /founder-os:inbox:drafts-approved to push approved drafts to Gmail.