# Triage and labels

Every new email gets one classifier call. The verdict becomes Gmail
labels, and for reply-worthy mail, a draft. Labels are a write-only
projection: the app writes them on events and never reads them back as
state, so renaming, recoloring or removing a label in Gmail is always
safe.

## What each label means

| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **Pending** | Needs a reply from you. A draft is waiting in the thread (with a license). Goes back on when the other side writes again |
| **Resolved** | You marked the thread done. By default this is your act, in Gmail: swap Pending for Resolved. **Resolve automatically when I reply** flips it on your reply instead |
| **Urgent** | Reply-worthy and time-sensitive or blocking. Also a macOS notification carrying the subject only |
| **Newsletter** | Periodic publications you subscribed to |
| **Notification** | Automated mail from systems: receipts, alerts, calendar, CI |
| **Marketing** | Promotions and announcements from companies you have a relationship with |
| **Cold Outreach** | Unsolicited pitches from people you have never written to |
| **FYI** | Human mail that needs no reply |

![Labels in Gmail: Urgent, Pending, Newsletter, Notification, FYI](images/gmail-inbox.png)

Labels are created on first use with sensible colors; a color you pick in
Gmail is never overwritten. Rename any of them in **Preferences →
Gatekeeper → Label names** or in `[triage.labels]` and `[labels]`. A "/"
nests them (`Mail/Newsletter`). Gmail system label names (Important,
Starred, …) are rejected, which is why urgent mail is Urgent.

## Guards

- **Anyone you have written to is never Cold Outreach.** A local ledger
  of correspondents, built from your sent mail, plus conversation signals
  (a thread you are already in) guard it.
- **Mail you already answered gets no draft.** After the agent has been
  offline, it compares message times and skips anything you replied to
  from your phone in the meantime.
- **The newest message owns the thread's state.** A reopened conversation
  comes back to Pending.
- **Replies go to Reply-To** when the sender set one, not blindly to From,
  and are written from the alias the customer wrote to.
- **Instructions inside an email are ignored.** Email content is fenced as
  data in every prompt.

## Skipping the inbox

**Preferences → Gatekeeper → Skip the inbox**, or `triage.archive`. For
each chosen category the email is labeled and removed from INBOX in the
same call. It is never deleted, never marked spam, and a live conversation
(anyone you have written to, or a thread the app tracks) is labeled but
kept in the inbox.

## Urgent and notifications

![A notification carries the subject only](images/notification-draft.png)

Urgent reply-worthy mail gets the Urgent label and a notification. The
agent also notifies for a new draft, for a Gmail re-authorization, and when
it gives up on a message after repeated provider failures. Notifications
carry the subject and never the body. Turn them off in **Preferences →
General** or `email.notifications = false`.

## Cold outreach, tuned to you

**What counts as warm?** in Preferences (`triage.coldOutreachHint`) adds
your own criteria to the classifier: "intros from our investors are
warm", "anyone mentioning our open roles is a candidate, not outreach".

## Skipping senders

`email.skipSenders` (**Preferences → General → Skip senders**) lists
address fragments that are ignored entirely, with no classifier call:
`mailer-daemon`, `noreply@`, a monitoring address. Matched on the address,
never the display name.

## Resolving

Replying is not the same as done, so by default Pending stays until you
swap it for Resolved in Gmail. Clicking Pending in Gmail's sidebar is
therefore your "open" list. If you would rather have the label flip on
your reply, turn on **Resolve automatically when I reply**
(`labels.autoResolve`).

## Trying it first

```bash
inboxminder classify <gmail-message-id>
```

prints the verdict and labels nothing.

## Without a license

Without an active license the app writes no drafts, follows up on nothing,
hands nothing off and polishes nothing. Nothing is ever deleted, and
activating a key picks up where it left off.