maximebaudette/email-triage

Email Triage

This skill sorts emails from the shared inbox according to topic and decides what to do with each message:

• career → dispatch to Andy (career-manager profile)
• health → dispatch to Cooper (health-coach profile)
• MARS-owned → handle locally (limited safe actions only)
• unsure → escalate directly to Maxime (never auto-archived or mutated)

The inbox polling cron loads this skill when it detects new mail. The skill performs the actual classification and routing.

Core principle:
Only ever hand off a message_id plus a very short summary. The receiving profile is responsible for fetching the full message content using the google-workspace skill.

This skill is fully self-contained. It no longer requires a separate agent-dispatch skill.

Classification

Every processed message must be classified into exactly one of the four categories above.

If classification is ambiguous or the model is not confident, the message must fall back to unsure.

Dispatch (career / health)

When a message is classified as career or health, this skill is responsible for handing it off to the correct profile.

Preferred handoff (recommended):

• Create a task in the shared kanban board assigned to the target profile, containing the email_id and minimal context.

Lightweight alternative (when kanban is not suitable):

• Direct profile invocation: hermes chat -p career-manager -q "Fetch and process Gmail message <id>. Short context: ..."

After a successful handoff, the skill may archive + mark the original message as read (Inbox messages only). Non-Inbox targeted messages keep their current state.

MARS-owned handling

Messages classified as MARS-owned are processed directly by this skill.

Allowed actions (keep them minimal and safe):

• Reading the full message
• Archiving clearly non-actionable automated mail (newsletters, receipts, etc.) that is still in the Inbox

Forbidden:

• Replying, forwarding, deleting, applying meaningful labels, or any high-impact change.

If a safe action is taken successfully on an Inbox message, it may be archived and marked read.

Unsure handling

Messages classified as unsure must never be mutated by this skill.

• Leave the message exactly where it is (especially if it is still in the Inbox).
• Escalate to Maxime with the message_id, sender, subject, date, and a short reason why it was marked unsure.

This ensures the message remains visible on future sweeps until a human resolves it.

Mutation Rules (strict)

• Only archive + mark read an Inbox message after a successful terminal outcome (confirmed dispatch to Andy/Cooper, or successful safe MARS-owned action).
• unsure messages: zero mutations ever.
• Any error or uncertainty on a specific message: leave that message untouched.
• Pre-run auth failure: zero mutations and escalate to Maxime.

Targeted / Manual Use

The skill can also be invoked directly for a single message or a custom query (useful for re-processing or debugging):

• By email_id
• By arbitrary Gmail query (may include mail outside the Inbox)

Targeted runs follow the same classification and mutation rules.

History / Revamp Notes

• Original versions combined triage logic with specific delegation transport.
• 2026 revamp made the skill self-contained: it owns classification by topic and the decision of where to route work (Andy / Cooper / MARS / Maxime).
• The old separate agent-dispatch contract has been retired.

Safety

All mailbox changes go through the google-workspace skill. Failed or uncertain handoffs leave the original message untouched so the flow is repeatable and safe.