Collect one Gmail label every morning
How do I let my organization collect my labelled email every morning, without it filing anything I have not said yes to?
- Source
- Current Internal package, pages/anw-w2-b01.html (Internal b518c35b; src/hunter-week2/SOURCE.md). Original handoff: Internal PR #125.
- Copy
- Exact Internal source package, vendored without editing its lesson or prompt bytes.
- Prompts
- Prompts are rendered from the current vendored Internal package named in Source. Historical publication: student 50ab8c5c from Internal 0e2885b5; that receipt does not qualify later Outlook changes.
- Checked in the app
- Historical baseline QA: bounded integrated checks passed for fresh preparation, upgrade, supported-model native routing and tracing. This receipt does not qualify later Outlook changes. Ordinary-student and Windows qualification remain unverified.
- Open to students
- Yes.
- Other view
- one part at a time (Wade chose one part at a time; one scroll is kept to compare)
In Module 2 you collected a small selection of email by hand and approved what went into Cairns. This bonus turns that into a morning habit for one Gmail label you choose, such as cairns.
Each morning, a scheduled run collects any new email you gave that label and saves the originals in your library. The Knowledge Librarian (Sallee) then drafts short summaries and a filing proposal. Nothing becomes approved knowledge until you say yes, just as in Module 2. Your morning brief shows what ran under Ran and what waits for you under Needs you.
The schedule is earned, not assumed. You run the same collection by hand three times first. Only then does the Chief of Staff propose it as a standing order, and only your exact yes adopts it.
A standing order for one label, a morning run on your own computer that collects that label's new email, and a brief that tells you what arrived and what is waiting for your decision.
Cairns is only as useful as it is current. If you have to remember to collect every week, it falls behind. Labelling an email takes you one click in Gmail, and the rest happens while you get on with your work. You still decide what your organization keeps.
Choose one label, run the collection by hand three times, adopt the standing order the Chief of Staff proposes, set up the schedule yourself, and read the first morning brief.
You choose the label, approve the standing plan, adopt or decline the standing order, set up the schedule in your own app, and say yes or no to every filing. Your organization collects and proposes. It never files, sends, labels, archives or deletes anything on its own.
Before you start
Finish Module 2 with Gmail as your connected source, so you have collected and filed from Gmail at least once. If you used exports instead, this bonus is not for you yet: a morning run needs a connected account.
You also need the charter you adopted in Week 1. Your charter says local course work does not authorize scheduling, so this bonus includes a charter amendment you approve in Part 3.
Start with the Chief of Staff. The Operator (Gigawatt) checks your Gmail connection, and the Course Companion (The Professor) answers questions about this page.
Start or resume this bonus
Use the native aibl-chief-of-staff agent to start the optional Week 2 bonus. Read course/workforce/week2/prompts/anw-w2-b01.txt and course/workforce/week2/lessons/anw-w2-b01.md. Show the plan and wait for my go. Do not set up a schedule or save a standing order. If the named agent is unavailable, pause and ask Gigawatt to check the installation.
Choose one label
About 10 minutes.
A label is the whole scope of the morning run. The run reads email with that label and nothing else. It never reads your inbox, and it never searches by a name, a subject or a sender.
Pick a short name made of letters, numbers and dashes, such as cairns or for-cairns. Create it in Gmail and add it to two or three emails that belong in your library, the kind you collected in Module 2.
Some things never belong under this label: emails that carry passwords, login codes or keys, and anything you are not allowed to share with your model provider. If one slips in, the run holds it, saves nothing from it and tells you. It never tries that email again. The check happens after your model has read the email, so it stops the email being saved, not being read. Keep those emails out of the label.
Do this now: create your label
Create the label in Gmail and label two or three emails from the last week. Write the label name in your course progress note, work/course/staff/progress.md.
Run the collection by hand three times
About 30 minutes, 10 minutes each time, on three different days.
Ask the Chief of Staff to collect your label, the same way you collected in Module 2. Use the label as the whole query: label:cairns, with a date window of the last few days and a limit of 25 messages or fewer. You see the preview, say the exact approval line, and the Knowledge Librarian drafts summaries and a filing proposal from what arrived.
A clean run is one where every page was read, nothing was held or cut off at the limit, and the receipt shows what you expected. File or decline the proposal as usual; the run counts either way.
If a run is not clean, the count starts again from one. That is the point: a job that runs while you are not watching must already be boring.
Do this now: make three clean runs
Run the collection on three different days. After each one, add the run's folder, runs/<job>/, to your progress note with the word clean or what went wrong.
Adopt the standing order
About 15 minutes.
After your third clean run, ask the Chief of Staff whether this job has earned a schedule. It writes a proposal in runs/<job>/standing-proposal.md that names your three runs, the label, the limit, the morning trigger and what the run may and may not do.
Then your session prepares the standing plan: the one label, the first day to collect from, the limit and where originals are saved. It ends with a line that starts APPROVE STANDING INTAKE. That line is your one approval for every morning run. If anyone changes the plan later, every run stops until you approve a new line.
Read the proposal and the plan. Change what you want. When they are right:
- Say the exact approval line yourself.
- Say yes to the charter amendment the Chief of Staff shows you, which allows this one scheduled collection and nothing wider. The Charter Steward records your ruling.
- Save the standing order yourself as
work-orders/standing/<name>.md. If it is not in that folder, it is not a standing order.
Do this now: adopt or decline
Adopt the standing order, or decline it and keep collecting by hand. Declining is a good answer if the three runs taught you something you want to fix first.
Set up the morning schedule yourself
About 10 minutes.
You set up the schedule in your own app. Your organization never schedules itself.
In Claude Code, use a local scheduled task in the desktop app. Open the Code tab, click Routines, then New routine, and choose Local, not a cloud routine: the run needs your workbench folder and your Gmail connection on this computer. Set the schedule to Daily at a time before you usually start work, pick your workbench as the folder, and paste the morning run prompt below as the instructions.
In Codex, use Automations to run the same morning run prompt once a day in your workbench.
A local task runs only while the app is open and your computer is awake. If your computer slept through the morning, it runs once when you come back, and collects from where the last finished run stopped, so nothing is missed.
Click Run now once and watch it. If the app asks for permission, check that the request is to read Gmail or to run the workbench's collection helper before you allow it. Allow nothing that sends, drafts, labels, archives or deletes email.
You can pause the task at any time from its page in Routines, and delete it there too. Pausing the task is how you stop the morning run. Your standing order stays in your folder until you remove it.
Do this now: schedule it and run it once
Set up the task, click Run now, and check that a new dated folder appeared under runs/ with a receipt.
Use the native aibl-chief-of-staff agent to run my standing morning email collection. Read course/workforce/week2/prompts/anw-w2-b01-morning.txt and follow it exactly. If the named agent is unavailable, pause and ask Gigawatt to check the installation.
Read your first morning brief
About 10 minutes.
The next morning, open the brief. Under Ran you see how many emails were collected, from which days, and where the originals are. Under Needs you you see anything waiting for you:
- A filing proposal from the Knowledge Librarian. Read it and say yes or no, exactly as in Module 2.
- An email that was held because it looked like it held a password, code or key. Nothing from it was saved. Decide whether to remove the label or leave it out.
- More new email than the limit. The next run collects the rest.
If there was no new labelled email, the brief says so. That is a normal morning.
Do this now: answer what needs you
Answer every item under Needs you. Then check that nothing new appeared in library/knowledge/ that you did not say yes to.
If you get stuck
| What you notice | What to try |
|---|---|
| A hand run keeps stopping at the limit. | Label fewer emails at a time, or leave the label off long threads. The limit stays at 25 or fewer. |
| The run says the standing plan changed. | Nothing ran. Ask your session to show you the plan. If you meant the change, approve the new line; if not, ask the Operator to put the old plan back. |
| The morning task did not run. | Your computer was probably asleep or the app was closed. The next run catches up from where the last one stopped. |
| The task is waiting for a permission you are not sure about. | Leave it waiting and ask The Professor what the request means before you allow it. |
| Filings appear that you did not approve. | Stop and pause the task. That should never happen; ask the Chief of Staff to show you the receipts. |
Before you finish
You can point to your three clean hand runs, your approved standing plan, the Charter Steward's record of your amendment and your saved standing order. Explain, in your own words:
- What the morning run may read. One label, at most your limit each run, and no attachments.
- What it may never do. Send, draft, label, archive or delete email, or file anything without your yes.
- How you stop it. Pause or delete the task in your app.
Words you now own
- Label scope: the one Gmail label that is the whole boundary of the morning run.
- Clean run: a run with nothing held, failed or cut off, and a receipt that shows what you expected.
- Standing plan: the scope you approve once, by its approval line, for every scheduled run.
- Standing order: the job you adopted and saved in
work-orders/standing/, with its trigger. - Held message: an email the run did not save because it looked like it carried a secret. It waits for you and is never tried again.
Next: Nothing new is required. Keep labelling the emails you want in Cairns, and answer your brief each morning.