Gmail Skill
People spend a surprising amount of time on email. According to various studies, it is around two hours a day for the average working person. A big chunk of that goes to reading things that turn out not to matter, writing routine replies, and digging for that one email somebody sent three weeks ago. The Gmail skill lets your agent take care of the boring parts.
You say "look through my inbox for anything urgent" or "write a reply to Sarah about the deadline" and the agent just goes and does it. No tab switching, no scrolling through a pile of promotional emails.
What the agent does with Gmail
It reads any email in your inbox: the sender, subject, body, and any attachments. If you want, it summarizes a batch of emails at once, so you get the picture in 20 seconds instead of spending 15 minutes reading everything. It composes and sends emails to any address, replies within threads (keeping the context), and forwards messages to other people. The inbox search is quite handy too. You say "find the email from John about the service agreement from October" and the agent uses Gmail's own search engine to pull it up.
It can also save drafts if you want to look them over before hitting send, apply labels to organize things, archive what you do not need, and mark messages as read or unread. All of this through regular conversation, no commands to memorize.
Example conversation
You:
"Check my inbox for the last 24 hours and summarize anything important."
Agent:
"7 emails in the last 24 hours. 3 look important: (1) Meeting invite from David, Friday 2pm, project kickoff. (2) Client feedback from Lisa at TechCorp, she approved the proposal with minor edits. (3) IT security alert, password reset required by end of week. The other 4 are newsletters and promo stuff."
You:
"Accept David's invite and draft a thank-you reply to Lisa."
Agent:
"Done. Accepted the meeting invite. Here is the draft reply to Lisa: 'Hi Lisa, thanks for the quick turnaround on the feedback. I will incorporate the changes by Thursday. Let me know if you need anything before then.' Send it or keep as draft?"
You:
"Send it. Also, find that proposal document I emailed Lisa last week, I need to make the changes she mentioned."
Agent:
"Reply sent. Found the email from last Tuesday with subject 'TechCorp Proposal v2'. Lisa's feedback mentions three changes: update the timeline on page 4 to start from March instead of February, add a section about ongoing support, and fix the pricing table where the annual discount should be 15% not 10%."
How people actually use this
Morning inbox triage. First thing in the morning: "what came in overnight?" The agent scans your inbox and tells you what matters. Three new emails, one from your manager about the quarterly review, one shipping notification, one newsletter. You decide which ones deserve a reply, the agent drafts them.
Digging up old messages. "Find the email from John at Acme about the service agreement from October." This happens constantly. The agent searches your inbox and has the answer in a few seconds. Much faster than manually hunting through message threads.
Handling repeated questions. If you keep getting the same questions from clients (pricing, availability, setup details), the agent drafts and sends replies based on your guidelines. You deal with the unique conversations, and the routine stuff gets handled automatically.
Research and email in one go. Pair this with web search for a workflow like: "research the latest packaging trends, write a summary, and email it to the product team." The agent does both tasks without you switching tools.
How this compares to Gmail's built-in AI
Google added AI features to Gmail, like "Help me write" and smart reply suggestions. Those work fine for simple, short tasks right there in the Gmail window. The difference with ClawStart is scope. Your agent can read an email, go search the web for context, check something in Notion, and then write a reply that draws on all of that. It is not limited to whatever is on the screen.
And there is the access question. Gmail's AI features only work inside the Gmail web app. Your ClawStart agent works through web chat, Telegram, and whatever else you have connected. You can manage your email from a Telegram message while you are walking to lunch.
Works well with other skills
Use web search to look into a topic and then have the agent email the findings to a colleague. Use browser control to pull data from a website and send it as a formatted report. Through Telegram, you can tell the agent "email the team with today's meeting notes" straight from a Telegram chat on your phone.
What it cannot do yet
The skill only works with Google Gmail accounts. Outlook, Yahoo, and custom IMAP are not supported. It can read text-based attachments but cannot download or attach files like PDFs, images, or spreadsheets. Under normal use you will not hit Google's rate limits, but sending more than about 50 emails in one day could trigger spam protections. The agent reads meeting invites from email, but direct Google Calendar integration is not there yet. It can accept invites by replying to the email though.
Security
Authentication goes through OAuth 2.0. Your email password is never stored or seen by ClawStart. You grant specific permissions through the standard Google consent screen and can revoke them at any time from your Google account. All email data is processed inside your isolated agent container.
Getting started
Launch your agent and connect your Google account through the settings panel. The agent walks you through the OAuth flow. Available on all paid plans. Check out the other skills and MCP servers to see what else your agent can do.