> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rundesert.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Incoming email

> Start an automation when a message lands in your inbox.

Your automation can read your incoming mail and act on it. New messages get
pushed to your workspace as they arrive.

This fits any job where the work shows up as email. Sorting support requests.
Pulling numbers out of receipts. Flagging the messages you actually need to see.

<Tip>
  **Tell the agent which senders matter before you build anything else.** Every
  message in your inbox reaches your workspace, and newsletters and receipts will
  outnumber the mail you care about. Read [Screen the mail
  first](#screen-the-mail-first) to see why that matters for your bill.
</Tip>

## Screen the mail first

Your automation gets every message that lands in your inbox. Most of them have
nothing to do with the job.

That is fine as long as you check the cheap things first. Sender, subject line,
and whether a file is attached all cost you nothing to look at, because plain
code reads them in a fraction of a second. Agent judgment costs real money and
takes real time. So screen with the cheap check, and only spend the agent on
messages that pass.

Say who counts when you describe the job:

> Only handle mail from our billing address and anything with a PDF attached.
> Skip everything else without looking at it.

> Here are the five vendors we buy from. Keep a list of them, check the sender
> against that list, and ignore the rest.

Ask the agent to keep the list somewhere you can edit:

> Put the sender list on a page in the UI so I can add addresses without asking
> you.

Now a busy inbox costs you almost nothing. Two hundred newsletters get dropped by
a sender check, and the agent only wakes up for the four invoices that matter.

<Note>
  A sender list beats a description. "Mail from `billing@acme.com`" is a rule
  your automation can check in one step. "Important vendor mail" is a judgment
  call, so the agent has to read every message to make it.
</Note>

## Turn on two switches

Two things must be on before a single message arrives, and you own one of them.

<Steps>
  <Step title="You turn on inbox access">
    Go to **Integrations** in the dashboard, connect your Google account, and
    switch on **Incoming email**.

    Only you can do this. The agent cannot turn it on and will never ask you for
    a password. Reading your mail is your call to make.
  </Step>

  <Step title="The agent subscribes your workspace">
    Ask for the automation and the agent handles this part. It tells the platform
    to deliver your mail to this workspace.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Order does not matter. If the agent subscribes before you flip the switch,
nothing breaks. Mail simply starts flowing once you turn it on.

## Ask for it

Say what should happen when a message arrives.

> Watch my inbox. When an invoice comes in, pull out the amount and the due date
> and add it to a table I can look at.

> Sort my support mail into urgent and everything else, and show me the urgent
> ones first.

> When a customer emails about a refund, draft a reply for me to review.

Pair each of these with the sender rule from above, so the agent knows both which
mail to open and what to do with it.

## What your automation sees

Each message arrives with the sender, the recipients, the subject, the body, the
time it landed, and a list of any attachments.

Two limits are worth knowing up front:

* **Attachments come through as names only**, not files. The agent can go fetch
  the actual file when your job needs it, so mention it if you need the contents.
* **Very long messages get cut off** past roughly 256KB of text. Your automation
  can tell when that happened.

## Worth knowing

* **Only your inbox counts.** Sent mail, drafts, and spam never arrive, so do not
  build anything that expects to see your own replies.
* **Each message arrives once.** The platform handles duplicates for you.
* **Mail can land late.** If your workspace was asleep, expect a 10 to 60 second
  delay while it wakes up.
* **Watch out for reply loops.** Two automations that email each other are easy
  to start and annoying to stop. The agent will check with you before it sends
  anything back to an address that came from the message itself.

## If mail is not arriving

Check your switch first. Open **Integrations** and confirm **Incoming email** is
still on. It is the most common cause, and it is the half the agent cannot see or
fix. Then ask the agent to check that the workspace is still subscribed.

## Change it later

> Ignore anything from noreply addresses.

> Also handle mail sent to the sales alias.

> Stop watching my inbox.