How I Let Claude Automate My Email Replies (For Gmail & Microsoft)
How to connect Claude to Gmail and have it draft email replies in your voice, for free. This free setup file builds it for you in 5 to 15 minutes, even when your computer is off.
You’ll learn:
- How to connect Claude to Gmail or Google Workspace
- How Claude learns your voice from your last 300 sent emails
- Local or cloud: which version fits you
- How the cloud version drafts replies when your computer is off
- How to pause, check or change your routine later
Related videos
Claude Email Reply Drafts
Claude drafts replies to your new Gmail or Google Workspace emails in your voice. You edit and press send. It never sends anything.
Intro
Since Claude released scheduled tasks that can run while your computer is offline, I haven’t replied to a single email myself. Claude drafts the replies for me, in my own voice, and I just read them and press send.
In this video I show you how to connect Claude to your Gmail or Google Workspace inbox, teach it how you write, and build the automation with my free setup file. It’s built for Gmail and Google Workspace. I haven’t tested it with Microsoft 365.
Download the free setup file
Download the setup file from the link in the description. It lands in your downloads folder, and you double-click it to unzip it.
Open the Claude Desktop app, click the Code icon to start a new Claude Code session, click New, and drag the unzipped folder into the chat. Then say “run the setup.” That’s it. Claude reads the folder and runs the setup for you.
The first thing it asks is which email address you want drafts for. These instructions will likely work with other AI tools too: drag the same folder in and say “run the setup.”
Connect your email to Claude
Next, Claude checks that your Gmail is connected, and helps you connect it if it isn’t. The setup file is built to work with Gmail or Google Workspace business email. Microsoft 365 has a built-in Claude connector, so it should work, but I haven’t personally tested it. If you try it, please comment on the video so other people know.
To connect an email yourself, click your name at the bottom left of Claude, open Settings, and search for “connectors.” You’ll see Gmail and Microsoft 365. Click the plus icon, choose connect, and follow the instructions.
These are actually secure connectors that let Claude read and write your emails, but it will still require your permission to send them.
This setup only drafts replies in your inbox. It never sends anything for you. If you use several Gmail accounts, you can ask Claude to set up the GWS CLI so it can reach all of them.
Build your voice profile
Once your email is connected, Claude builds your voice profile. The setup file has it read your last 300 sent emails and learn how you reply: how long your emails are, how you start them, how you end them.
I like to open with “hey, John, hope all is well” and close with “speak soon!” It also picks up your words and how your tone changes for a client, a prospect, a co-worker, a family member or a friend.
Claude doesn’t keep a copy of your emails. It reads them once and writes the profile.
Local or cloud?
After the profile, Claude asks a few questions and then whether you want the automation to run locally or in the cloud. This is one of the most important choices in the whole setup.
Local means Claude runs the scheduled task on your computer at set times, like 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Most of my friends run it this way and it works fine. It’s also the easiest to set up, in about a minute, and it costs nothing extra because it uses your Claude subscription.
The catch is that it only drafts once or twice a day, and your computer has to be on with the Claude Desktop app open at those times. The web version doesn’t work for this. When an email comes in, I want the reply drafted right away.
Keep your computer awake
If you go local, there’s a setting that helps. Open Claude’s settings, search for “awake,” and turn on “keep computer awake.” I wouldn’t use it on battery power, because it drains the battery.
It only keeps your computer awake while Claude is actually working, so at 9 a.m. or 6 p.m. it might still go to sleep and skip the routine. My pro tip: open a new Claude session and tell it to always keep your computer awake while it’s plugged in. It edits your computer settings so it never goes to sleep. That’s how mine is set up.
The cloud version
If you want drafts instantly when an email arrives, and you don’t want Claude open or your computer online, set up a cloud scheduled task. It runs on Anthropic’s servers instead of your computer, so it works even when your computer is offline.
When I recorded this, you could use it free with your existing subscription. That most likely won’t last forever, and nobody knows yet what Anthropic will charge. My guess is somewhere around 15 cents per email, which would still be a lot cheaper than a company like Superhuman, Jace, Gmelius or Fyxer. I like those companies, and my favorite is Jace. If you want something simple out of the box, go check them out. With Claude you can customize the drafts as much as you want.
The cloud version is the one I recommend, but it takes more setup. I don’t think it will work with Microsoft 365. If you have Microsoft, use the local setup, and if you find a workaround, tell us in the comments.
Set up Claude in Chrome
To set up the cloud version, you need the Claude extension installed in Google Chrome. Search Google for “Claude in Chrome,” click the first link, and click Add to Chrome. Mine says Remove because I already added it.
That lets Claude open your Google settings in Chrome and set everything up while you watch.
Anytime it does that, just literally reply to it and say, do it for me. And it will.
How the webhook works
For the cloud task to know when a new email arrives, it needs a webhook. Claude opens a page in your Chrome browser and creates a script that checks your inbox every minute.
The script ignores newsletters, calendar invites and promotional emails. When it finds an email you’d want to reply to, it pings Claude to wake up and run the routine. Claude drafts the reply in your voice and leaves it in your inbox, ready for you to send. A few more steps are involved and it’s a little technical, but Claude guides you through them. Once it’s running, a new draft shows up in your inbox within a few minutes. It has saved me hours a week.
Pause or edit your routine
To find where the task lives, click Scheduled in the left sidebar of Claude and search for “replies” or “email.” You’ll see “Draft Gmail replies.”
Use the toggle at the top right to pause it or turn it back on. Open the history to see every email it drafted for you. You can also open the instructions it follows. They’re mostly written for Claude, so you can ignore them.
Improve your drafts
If the drafts aren’t right, maybe they’re too short or too long, start a new session and tell Claude to edit your email drafting scheduled task, then add what you want changed. For example: make my replies shorter, never start with the word “hey,” or when a client asks to reschedule, always offer two days that week.
Claude learns from those instructions and applies them to every future email.
That’s your own free AI email assistant: every reply drafted in your voice, whether your computer is online or offline. Download the free setup file, unzip it, drag it into Claude, and tell Claude to run the setup. Next, watch my skills beginner tutorial to learn how to build your own skills, including a voice profile for your social posts and website content.
Since Claude released scheduled tasks that can now run when your computer is offline, I haven’t replied to a single email myself because Claude is drafting the replies for me. And Claude may have just put Superhuman, Jace, Fyxer, and Gmelius completely out of business. In this video, I’m gonna show you how to connect Claude to your Gmail or Microsoft 365 and teach it how to draft replies exactly using your voice and also build the automation with my setup file completely for free. And if you don’t know me, my name is David Bitton and I’m a five-time entrepreneur that’s generated hundreds of millions in revenue. And I’m now leading AI workshops and helping companies as their fractional chief AI officer. And if you’re not already, make sure to hit that subscribe button for more AI tutorials just like this.
In the description of this video is a free link to download the setup file that will do everything for you. Once you download it, you’re gonna see it in your downloads folder. You’re gonna double click to unzip or uncompress it. You’re gonna open up your Claude Desktop app, click on the code icon to start a new Claude Code session, click New, and then you’re going to drag that folder into the chat. And you’re gonna see it loaded up right over here. You could drag it in one more time if you want. So now it’s also attached to the chat. So you have both of them linked. You might not need to do this, but you can. And then you’re just going to say, run the setup. That’s it. And it’s going to look into this folder and run the Claude setup file.
And by the way, all of these instructions will likely work with any other AI tool you’re using, like ChatGPT or Grok Bot or any future tool, where you can just drag the same folder in. And say, run the setup, and it should do the same exact thing. The first thing it’s gonna do is ask you which email address you want to create drafts for. And then it’s gonna actually check that your email or Gmail is connected to Claude. And if not, it will help you connect it. By the way, this setup file was built to work with Gmail or Google Workspace business emails. But you could always ask Claude or your AI tool if it could do the same thing for Microsoft Office or any other email providers. Microsoft 365 does have a built-in Claude connector, so it should work, but I haven’t actually personally tested it.
So if you have used it and it does work, please comment on this video for other people. And if your email isn’t connected, the easiest way to connect... Is to click your name on the bottom left of Claude, and click on settings. You’re gonna type in connectors to the top left search box. Click on that. And you should see Gmail and Microsoft 365 right over here. If you don’t, you could search for Gmail. And you will find it right away. And how do you actually connect it? You just click the plus icon or you click into it. And you can click, connect to Claude and follow the instructions. These are actually secure connectors that let Claude read and write your emails, but it will still require your permission to send them if you want.
So keep in mind, this will not just send emails for you. It doesn’t do that. It will need your permission to send emails. For now, this setup file is only going to draft the replies for you in your inbox. It will not send the emails for you. connect Claude to your email because your Claude account uses another email address that is not linked to your actual Claude email address that you’re using, or... If you use multiple Gmail accounts, you can actually ask Claude to set up the GWS CLI for all of your emails so it can actually connect to multiple Google accounts, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides, and any Google products for all of your accounts. After you connect your emails, the next step is for Claude to build your voice profile so it knows exactly... How you like to reply to emails and exactly how you sound.
So the setup file will have Claude search through your last 300 emails that you sent and it will build a voice profile of exactly how you reply to emails. For example, how long are your emails normally? Are they short? Are they super long? How do you start your emails? So I like to say, hey, John, hope all is well. How do you end your emails? I like to say, speak soon with an exclamation point. So it’s gonna learn all of that and all the words that you use and how your tone might change for when you email a client or a prospect or a co-worker or a family member or a friend. It learns all of those. And by the way, Claude will not keep a copy of all of your emails. It just reads them once and writes the profile for you. So don’t worry if you’re concerned. After the voice profile is built, Claude is going to ask you a few more questions about creating replies, and then it will ask if you want to create the automation locally or in the cloud as a scheduled task, which is actually one of the most important parts of this entire process.
If you select local, it means that Claude is going to run... This scheduled automation locally on your computer at the same exact time every day, like at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. twice a day, and it will only draft replies once or twice a day on that schedule. And most of my friends have their Claude set up this way, and it works fine. But the issue is, it’s only drafting replies once or twice a day instead of right away, instantly when you get a new email. So I don’t know about you, but when an email comes in, I’m obsessively checking it, and I want a reply drafted for me. I don’t want to wait till 6 p.m. for the reply to get drafted. So that’s why local might not be good for you. And also, your computer has to be on with the Claude Desktop app, like I have open, running 24/7 in order for it to draft those emails, or at least on from when you have your scheduled tasks.
So if you have it at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Your computer has to be on with Claude open at those times. And you cannot do this from the web version. You have to have the desktop app. the local version, is the easiest method to set up. You could do it, honestly, in less than a minute. And it doesn’t cost you anything, since it uses your Claude subscription. And you could probably set this up also with Microsoft 365 emails, too. For another pro tip... You can actually go into Claude’s settings again, and you can type in the word awake, and you’ll see here it says keep computer awake, so you click on that. And right over here, you toggle this setting on. I wouldn’t recommend battery power because it will drain it. And it will keep your computer online, and it will not turn off if Claude is still working.
It will stop your computer from sleeping while Claude is still running. The issue is, Claude has to be doing something or working on something. So at 9am or 6pm, it might not be working on something. So your computer will probably turn off or go to sleep, and the routine and automation will not run. So, here is another pro tip. If you want Claude to always stay on and never turn your computer off, you actually want to open up a new Claude session, and you want to tell it... Always keep my computer awake while it’s plugged in. And that’s it. By the way, if you use Codex, ChatGPT, that same thing will work. It’s going to edit your computer settings, and it will make sure your computer never goes to sleep. That’s how I have my computer on. So, if you like the local version, and you’re okay with drafting emails once or twice a day, 9 a.m. or 6 p.m., totally fine.
You can just do that, and I’d recommend it. It’s easy, and it works great. However, if you want to draft your emails instantly, in real time, when an email comes in, and you don’t want your Claude to be open, and you don’t want your computer to be online... Jonas Then, you are going to set up a cloud scheduled task, which basically means that this automation is running online, in the cloud, on Anthropic servers and computers, instead of your own computer, and it will work even if your computer is not online. And right now, Claude just introduced this new feature, so they’re allowing you to use it completely free with your existing subscription as of today. However, the downside is, it most likely will not be free forever, so depending on what, when you’re watching this video, it might not be free anymore, and as of this video, we do not know how much they’re gonna charge to run this in the cloud for each new email or automation that comes in.
Honestly, if I had to guess, it doesn’t use that many tokens, but I would assume it’s probably gonna be around 15 cents per email, so it’s not gonna be free, but it will still... Be a lot more affordable, most likely depending on how many emails you get, compared to hiring a company or paying a company like Superhuman, Jace, Gmelius, or Fyxer. Because they’re charging you more, obviously, they have to make some money off it. By the way, I actually love those companies. I’ve tried all of them. My favorite is Jace. So, if you just want something simple, out of the box, you don’t want to do this setup, yeah, go check those out. They’re great. And, if you do happen to be using one of those emails, but you might not be happy with how the drafts reply for you, or some other settings that you want to tweak, and a lot of them do have some customizations, but with Claude, obviously, you can customize it, unlimited, whatever you want.
So, you can build it yourself, and that’s why we are going to build it right now, showing you how to build your own email automation in the cloud. And this is still, personally, the version I recommend, but the setup does take some more time, and it’s a little more complicated, but in my opinion, totally worth it. I also do not think, disclaimer, that this cloud setup will work with Microsoft 365, and it will only work with the local setup if you have Microsoft. But once again... If you’re setting it up with Office 365 somehow and you have a workaround, please let us know in the comments. To set up your email replies with the cloud version, you must have the Claude extension installed in your Google Chrome browser. So, Claude can set everything up for you. If you don’t, just go to Google and type in Claude in Chrome, and you’re gonna click the first link.
And on the top right, you’re gonna click Add to Chrome. Mine says Remove, because I already added it, but just click Add to Chrome. This will allow Claude to open your Google settings in Chrome and set everything up for you while you just watch it go to work. And that’s another pro tip. Claude will likely give you many steps to do on your own and tell you, do this, then do this next. And anytime it does that, just literally reply to it and say, do it for me. And it will. And if you’re enjoying this video and like all my pro tips, please like, comment, and hit that subscribe button as it does help the channel. So if you’re interested in how it will set up the cloud scheduled task, it basically needs a way to know when a new email comes in. And this is where something called a webhook comes into play. So Claude will open up a page in your Chrome browser, it will create a script that checks your inbox every single minute.
And it will, that script, by the way, will ignore any newsletters, calendar invites, promotional emails. It will just find the emails that you want it to reply to. And then, when it finds one, it will ping Claude. What I mean by that is, anytime a new email arrives, it will basically tell Claude, hey, wake up, a new email arrived. Run this email automation routine now. And then it will draft the email in your voice. And leave it in your inbox ready for you to hit send. And I cannot stress how much time this has saved me, hours a week for me replying to emails. There are a few more steps involved, and it’s a little bit technical, but Claude will guide you through the rest of them. And once it’s set up, anytime you get a new email, you should see a new draft appear in your inbox within a few minutes, and that’s pretty much it.
And if you’re curious... Where this scheduled task lives, so you could pause or edit it. You’re gonna click the scheduled link on the top left sidebar of Claude. And you are going to hit the search box and search for the word replies or email. And you will see, it should say draft Gmail replies. It should look like this. There’s a few things I want to show you. If you want to do this, temporarily, or permanently, pause it, or re-enable, you can just click this blue toggle on the top right to turn it on or off. If you wanted to see every single email that it drafted for you can come in here to your history and you can click into any of these and it will show you the Gmail emails that it’s drafting for you. And if you want to see the instructions to see what it’s following, you can just click here on the right and it will open up the instructions.
It’s honestly going to be gibberish to you. It’s mostly for Claude to read, so you could probably ignore that. But that brings me into the next part of editing the instructions. So if you want to edit your drafts, because let’s say you’re not happy, right? Maybe it’s not doing your replies correctly, maybe it’s too short, maybe it’s too long, you want to change something. Cool. You’re just going to go back and start a new session again, and you’re going to say, edit my email drafting scheduled task two, and then add whatever instructions you wanted to say. That’s pretty much it. some examples of things that you can say is, two, make my replies shorter, never start with the word, hey, when a client asks to reschedule, always offer two days that week. You can teach Claude whatever you want to teach it, and it will learn and improve for every future email in the future.
So that’s pretty much your own free AI email assistant in a nutshell, drafting every reply in your own voice while your computer is either online... Locally? Or offline, in the cloud. And remember, you just need to download the free setup file in the description of this video, unzip it, drag it into Claude, and tell Claude to run the setup, and it will do the rest for you. Lastly, if you want Claude to write your social media posts, website content, or literally anything else in your voice for whatever channel you need content for, you can have Claude build your own voice profiles using a custom skill. And if you’re not familiar with skills, make sure to watch my skills beginner tutorial next, right here, to learn how to build your own skills. But for now, enjoy, and I’ll see you on the next one.
