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email-triage

// IMAP email scanning and triage with AI classification via a local Ollama LLM. Scans unread emails, categorizes them as urgent, needs-response, informational, or spam, and surfaces important messages for agent consumption. Works standalone with heuristic fallback — Ollama optional but recommended.

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updated:March 4, 2026
SKILL.mdreadonly
SKILL.md Frontmatter
nameemail-triage
version1.0.1
descriptionIMAP email scanning and triage with AI classification via a local Ollama LLM. Scans unread emails, categorizes them as urgent, needs-response, informational, or spam, and surfaces important messages for agent consumption. Works standalone with heuristic fallback — Ollama optional but recommended.
metadata[object Object]

Email Triage

Scan your IMAP inbox, classify emails into priority categories, and surface the ones that need attention. Uses a local LLM (Ollama) for intelligent classification with a rule-based heuristic fallback when Ollama is unavailable.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.10+
  • IMAP-accessible email account (Gmail, Fastmail, self-hosted, etc.)
  • Ollama (optional) — for AI-powered classification. Without it, the script uses keyword-based heuristics that still work well for common patterns.

Categories

IconCategoryDescription
🔴urgentOutages, security alerts, legal, payment failures, time-critical
🟡needs-responseBusiness inquiries, questions, action items requiring a reply
🔵informationalReceipts, confirmations, newsletters, automated notifications
⚫spamMarketing, promotions, unsolicited junk

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables:

VariableRequiredDefaultDescription
IMAP_HOST✅—IMAP server hostname
IMAP_PORT—993IMAP port (SSL)
IMAP_USER✅—IMAP username / email address
IMAP_PASS✅—IMAP password or app-specific password
EMAIL_TRIAGE_STATE—./data/email-triage.jsonPath to the JSON state file
OLLAMA_URL—http://127.0.0.1:11434Ollama API endpoint
OLLAMA_MODEL—qwen2.5:7bOllama model for classification

Directories Written

  • EMAIL_TRIAGE_STATE (default: ./data/email-triage.json) — Persistent state file tracking classified emails and surfacing status

Commands

# Scan inbox and classify new unread emails
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py scan

# Scan with verbose output (shows each classification)
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py scan --verbose

# Dry run — scan and classify but don't save state
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py scan --dry-run

# Show unsurfaced important emails (urgent + needs-response)
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py report

# Same as report but JSON output (for programmatic use)
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py report --json

# Mark reported emails as surfaced (so they don't appear again)
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py mark-surfaced

# Show triage statistics
python3 scripts/email/email-triage.py stats

How It Works

  1. Connects to IMAP over SSL and fetches unread messages (up to 20 per scan).
  2. Deduplicates by Message-ID (or a hash of subject + sender as fallback) so emails are never classified twice.
  3. Classifies each email using Ollama if available, otherwise falls back to keyword heuristics.
  4. Stores state in a local JSON file — tracks category, reason, and whether the email has been surfaced.
  5. report surfaces only unsurfaced urgent and needs-response emails, sorted by priority.
  6. mark-surfaced flags reported emails so they won't appear in future reports.
  7. Auto-prunes state to the most recent 200 entries to prevent unbounded growth.

Integration Tips

  • Heartbeat / cron: Run scan periodically, then report --json to check for items needing attention.
  • Agent workflow: scan → report --json → act on results → mark-surfaced.
  • Without Ollama: The heuristic classifier handles common patterns (automated notifications, marketing, urgent keywords) well. Ollama adds nuance for ambiguous emails.
  • App passwords: If your provider uses 2FA, generate an app-specific password for IMAP access.