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Summarize unread Gmail into a daily Slack digest with Claude

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Created by: Cullen Brown || cullen
Cullen Brown

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Last update 8 hours ago

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Quick overview

This workflow runs on a daily schedule, pulls your unread Gmail from the last 24 hours, and uses Anthropic Claude to sort and summarize it by Gmail category — then posts a clean, triage-ready digest to a Slack channel so you can scan your inbox at a glance.

How it works

  1. Runs automatically on a daily schedule (default 8am).
  2. Fetches up to 50 unread emails from Gmail that arrived in the last 24 hours.
  3. A Code node combines them into a single prompt block, tagging each message with its Gmail category (Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates, Forums) and flagging multi-message threads.
  4. Anthropic Claude turns that into a concise, Slack-ready digest: active threads flagged at the top, Primary mail listed individually with a needs-reply note, and Promotions/Social condensed to a single count.
  5. A Code node extracts the summary text from Claude's API response.
  6. The digest is posted to your chosen Slack channel.

Setup

  1. Connect a Gmail OAuth2 credential to the Gmail node, and adjust the search query (e.g. is:unread newer_than:1d) or 50-email limit if needed.
  2. Add your Anthropic API key as an HTTP Header Auth credential named x-api-key, used for requests to https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages.
  3. Connect a Slack OAuth2 credential, select the target channel, and invite the Slack app/bot to that channel (/invite @YourApp) so posting succeeds.

Requirements

  • A Gmail account (connected via Gmail OAuth2).
  • An Anthropic (Claude) API key.
  • A Slack workspace with an app that has the chat:write scope, added to the target channel.
  • An n8n instance (Cloud or self-hosted).

Customization

  • Change the run time or frequency on the Schedule Trigger.
  • Adjust the Gmail query (is:unread newer_than:1d) or the 50-email limit to widen or narrow what's included.
  • Edit Claude's prompt to change how categories are summarized, what gets flagged, or the digest's tone.
  • Swap the Claude model (e.g. to Haiku) to lower cost, or raise max_tokens for very high email volume.
  • Point the Slack node at a different channel, or send it as a direct message instead.