Search your gmail from claude

Claude skill for Gmail is an Agent Skill: a written method your AI applies on demand, in Zealos or in any client that reads SKILL.md.

A Gmail skill tells the model how to search an inbox the way a person would — by thread and by relationship rather than by keyword — which is the difference between a search tool and an answer.

What is in this skill

nameemail-rules
descriptionRules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email.
allowed-toolsnone — this skill adds judgement, not reach
compatibilityZealos, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any client that reads SKILL.md
licenseFree to use and edit

How it works

  1. 1Search by participant and thread before searching by keyword, because the person is a better index than the words they happened to use.
  2. 2Read the whole thread before answering. The last message is frequently a correction of the one that contains the keyword.
  3. 3Quote the message you are relying on, with its date, so an answer about what someone agreed to can be checked.
  4. 4Say when the inbox does not contain the answer instead of assembling a plausible one from adjacent threads.

The skill itself

---
name: email-rules
description: Rules for subject lines, length, structure and calls to action in outbound and reply emails, including when not to send at all. Use whenever drafting or reviewing an email.
---

# Email rules

## Length

Under 120 words. Outbound: under 90. If it does not fit, the ask is not clear
enough yet.

## Subject lines

- 4–7 words, lowercase or sentence case. Not Title Case.
- Say the subject, not a tease. "Pricing for 40 seats" beats "Quick question".
- Never fake a reply with "Re:".
- No emoji, no "[URGENT]", no personalisation tokens visible in the subject.

## Structure

1. **One line of why-you**, specific enough that it could not be sent to anyone
   else. If it could, delete it — a generic opener is worse than none.
2. **The point**, in one or two sentences.
3. **One ask.** A question they can answer in a sentence, or a specific time.

No signature block essay. No attachment on a first email.

## Calls to action

Ask for a reply, not a meeting, on a first touch. "Worth a look?" outperforms
"Do you have 30 minutes Tuesday?" because the cost of answering is lower.

## When not to send

- Nothing has changed since the last email.
- You are following up on a follow-up with no new information.
- The recipient is on a thread where someone else owes the reply.
- The message exists to make the sender feel productive.

A skipped email costs nothing. A fourth "just bumping this" costs the account.

Who uses it

Account executive

What did we promise them in March becomes a question with a quoted answer rather than twenty minutes of scrolling.

Founder

Your inbox becomes searchable in the way you actually think about it — by person and commitment, not by remembered phrasing.

Customer success

Picking up an account mid-renewal, you can reconstruct what was agreed without asking the customer to repeat themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work in Claude Code as well as Zealos?

Yes. It is a standard Agent Skills folder, so the same SKILL.md applies wherever it is loaded — the tools differ, the method does not.

What access does it need?

Read access to Gmail for anything that searches. A skill narrows an agent's tools and can never widen them, so read-only stays read-only.

Can it act on what it finds?

Only with the tools the agent already has. Most people start with search and add drafting once they trust the answers.

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