OpenClaw + Gmail: Your Inbox, Controlled by AI

OpenClaw's Gmail integration gives you an AI agent that can read your inbox, triage emails, draft replies, and automate routine email workflows — from your terminal, with your real Gmail account. Email is still where a huge amount of work coordination happens, and most people are drowning in it. An AI agent that actually understands your context can help.

This guide covers setup, real workflows, and how to build an inbox system that works with you instead of against you.

What the Gmail Integration Can Do#

With the Gmail Skill loaded, OpenClaw can:

• Read and search emails with natural language queries
• Draft and send replies (with your review before sending)
• Triage and label incoming messages
• Unsubscribe from newsletters and marketing lists
• Forward specific emails to team members
• Search email history for specific information
• Create calendar events from email confirmations
• Log important emails to DuckDB for long-term reference

Setup#

1. Install DenchClaw#

npx denchclaw

2. Authenticate with Google#

The Gmail Skill uses the gog CLI for Google Workspace:

npm install -g gog-cli
gog auth login

Grant Gmail read and send permissions during the OAuth flow. For read-only workflows (triage and search without sending), read-only scope is sufficient.

3. Load the Gmail Skill#

Load the Gmail skill and help me manage my inbox.

For full workspace setup, see the DenchClaw configuration guide.

Inbox Triage#

Morning Triage#

The most immediately useful workflow:

Triage my inbox. Tell me:
1. Any emails requiring a response today (with a brief summary of each)
2. Any emails from important contacts (CRM lookup)
3. Any calendar invites I haven't responded to
4. Any automated/marketing emails I can safely archive

The agent reads your recent unread emails, categorizes them, and returns a prioritized list. Instead of opening your inbox and getting overwhelmed, you get a structured briefing.

Flagging Urgent Items#

Scan my inbox from the last 48 hours. Flag anything that looks urgent:
- emails that mention deadlines or "ASAP"
- escalations or complaints
- anything from our top 10 customers

The agent cross-references email senders against your DuckDB contacts to identify important customers, then scans content for urgency signals.

Newsletter and Subscription Cleanup#

Find all subscription and newsletter emails in my inbox 
from the last 30 days. List them by sender. 
For each one, tell me how often they send and I'll decide 
which ones to unsubscribe from.

The agent catalogs your subscriptions. You decide which to cut; the agent executes the unsubscribes.

Drafting Replies#

Quick Reply Drafts#

Draft a reply to the email from david@acme.com about the 
contract renewal. Tell him we're happy to renew, the pricing 
stays the same, and I'll send the paperwork by end of week.
Keep it brief and professional.

The agent drafts the reply in your voice. You review, edit if needed, then either send it directly or copy it to Gmail.

Important: OpenClaw should show you the draft before sending. Always review before your AI sends email on your behalf.

Context-Rich Replies#

Reply to sarah@potential-customer.com who asked about our pricing.
Pull our standard pricing info and write a response that:
- Thanks her for her interest
- Summarizes our tiers
- Offers a 15-minute call to discuss their specific needs
- Links to our docs

The agent drafts a personalized, context-aware response — not a canned template.

Bulk Response Handling#

For events where you receive many similar emails (post-conference, after a launch):

I have 23 emails from people who attended the workshop last week 
asking about the follow-up resources. Draft a standard reply 
that thanks them for attending, shares the resource link, 
and invites them to book a 1:1 with me.
Then show me the first 5 drafts so I can confirm the tone is right.

Searching Email History#

Gmail's search is good but you have to know what you're looking for. Natural language search is better:

Find the email thread where we discussed the Q1 pricing 
strategy with the Acme team. When was the last message?
What was agreed?

The agent searches Gmail, finds the thread, and summarizes the key decisions — without you digging through an archive.

Did anyone ever send me the annual contract for CloudProvider Inc?
If so, when did it arrive and what were the key terms?

Email history becomes queryable institutional memory.

Logging Important Emails to DuckDB#

For emails that matter long-term — contracts, key decisions, customer commitments — store them in DuckDB:

CREATE TABLE important_emails (
  id VARCHAR PRIMARY KEY,
  from_email VARCHAR,
  from_name VARCHAR,
  subject VARCHAR,
  date TIMESTAMP,
  summary VARCHAR,
  category VARCHAR,  -- contract, customer, decision, commitment
  thread_id VARCHAR,
  tags VARCHAR[]
);

Configure the agent to log emails matching certain criteria:

Going forward, whenever I receive an email about a contract, 
pricing change, or customer escalation, log a summary to 
the important_emails DuckDB table.

Now your email history is searchable alongside your CRM data. Learn about DenchClaw's workspace data model.

Automated Email Workflows#

Meeting Confirmation → Calendar Event#

I received an email from the Zendesk team confirming a meeting 
next Thursday at 10 AM PT. Find the email and create a calendar event.
Add their contact info and any agenda items mentioned in the email.

The agent reads the email, extracts the meeting details, and creates the calendar event via the Google Calendar skill.

Email → CRM Update#

When a potential customer emails you:

I received an email from tim@bigcorp.com introducing himself 
and asking about our product. Create a contact record in my DuckDB CRM
and log this as our first interaction. Set status to "New Lead."

Your CRM stays current without manual data entry.

Escalation Routing#

Check my support alias (support@mycompany.com) inbox for anything 
unresponded to in the last 24 hours. For anything marked High Priority 
or from a customer on our Enterprise plan, forward to the on-call engineer 
with a summary of the issue.

Building an Email Brief#

Combine Gmail with your other data sources for a comprehensive daily brief:

Give me my daily email brief:
1. Unread emails from the last 12 hours — categorized
2. Any responses needed today (with context from CRM if the sender is in my contacts)
3. Any calendar confirmations I should add to my calendar
4. Any contracts or important documents I should review
5. Anything I sent yesterday that I need to follow up on

This is the kind of brief an executive assistant would prepare. The AI agent runs it in under 60 seconds.

Privacy and Sending Permissions#

Email is high-stakes. Before sending anything, consider:

Always review before sending. Configure OpenClaw so the agent drafts replies and shows them to you before sending. Add an explicit "send this" confirmation step for any email the agent drafts.

Local processing. Your emails are processed locally by the agent. The email content you share with the AI model is limited to what you explicitly include in a prompt. Your full inbox doesn't get sent to an API in bulk.

Credentials stay local. OAuth tokens live on your machine, managed by the gog CLI. They're not stored in any cloud service.

This is the same local-first philosophy that underpins the entire DenchClaw platform.

Integration with Other Skills#

Gmail becomes more powerful when combined with other OpenClaw integrations:

Gmail + Calendar: Convert meeting confirmation emails to calendar events. Get reminded of emails you've been waiting on by checking against calendar events.

Gmail + CRM: When a customer emails, pull their CRM record automatically. Log important emails back to DuckDB. See the full setup guide.

Gmail + Linear/Jira: Convert a bug report email into a Linear issue. Get notified when a Linear ticket related to a customer email is resolved.

Gmail + GitHub: When someone emails you about a PR or issue, navigate directly to the relevant GitHub context.

FAQ#

Can OpenClaw send email on my behalf without my review? Technically yes, but this is not recommended. The safest setup is: agent drafts → you review → you confirm → agent sends. For automated workflows (like scheduled follow-ups), set up explicit confirmation gates.

Does OpenClaw work with Google Workspace (GSuite) accounts? Yes. The gog CLI supports both personal Gmail and Google Workspace accounts. Authentication is the same OAuth flow.

Can OpenClaw access my sent folder and drafts? Yes. The Gmail API provides access to all folders including Sent, Drafts, Spam, and custom labels.

How does OpenClaw handle email attachments? The agent can identify that attachments exist and describe them from the Gmail API metadata. Reading attachment content (PDFs, spreadsheets) requires downloading and processing the file — which is possible with appropriate tool permissions.

Can I use OpenClaw with multiple Gmail accounts? The gog CLI supports multiple Google accounts. You can configure the agent to operate on a specific account by specifying it in your instruction.

Ready to try DenchClaw? Install in one command: npx denchclaw. Full setup guide →