🎫 Draft Gmail replies with Claude Sonnet and log decisions in Google Sheets
⚡ 4 views · 🎫 Ticket Management & Triage
Description
Quick overview
This workflow monitors unread Gmail inbox messages, uses Anthropic Claude to decide whether a reply is needed and draft a response in your business voice, creates a Gmail draft in the original thread, and logs the email details and AI decision (category, urgency, escalation) to Google Sheets.
How it works
- Triggers every minute when a new unread email arrives in Gmail Inbox (excluding Promotions and Social categories).
- Normalizes the incoming email into consistent fields like sender name/address, subject, body, message ID, and thread ID.
- Sends the email plus your business profile (tone, facts, signature, and example replies) to Anthropic Claude to classify the email and generate a JSON reply draft when appropriate.
- Parses and sanitizes Claude’s JSON output, defaulting to “no reply” with an escalation flag if the response cannot be parsed.
- Creates a Gmail draft reply in the original thread when Claude indicates a reply is needed.
- Appends a row to a Google Sheets “Email Log” sheet with the timestamp, sender, subject, category, urgency, escalation flag, reason, and whether a draft was created.
Setup
- Connect your Gmail account in both the Gmail trigger and Gmail draft actions.
- Add your Anthropic credentials and select the Claude Sonnet model in the Anthropic chat model node.
- Connect Google Sheets, select the target spreadsheet, and ensure it has a worksheet named “Email Log” with columns: timestamp, from, subject, category, urgency, draft_created, escalate, reason.
- Update the business profile values (business name, tone, key facts, signature, and example replies) so Claude drafts match your voice and allowed facts.
- Optionally adjust the Gmail search query in the trigger to match the inbox labels and filtering you want.
Requirements
- A Gmail account
- An Anthropic API key
- A Google Sheets spreadsheet with a tab named Email Log
Customization
- Edit the business profile node with your business name, tone, key facts, signature and 2 or 3 example replies so drafts sound like you
- Tighten the Gmail search filter in the trigger to control which emails get processed
- Add a Slack or email alert for emails flagged as escalate
Additional info
Nothing is ever sent automatically. The workflow only creates drafts, a human always reviews and sends. Anything the AI cannot verify from your business facts is marked with a [CHECK] placeholder in the draft so the reviewer fills it in before sending. Tested end to end on a live inbox, including correct skipping of newsletters and cold outreach.
🔗 Nodes Used
Google Sheets, Gmail, Gmail Trigger, Schedule Trigger, Basic LLM Chain, Anthropic Chat Model
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File