Email Management with OpenClaw

This tutorial will show you how to use OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot, Clawdbot) to automate email management. You'll learn to process emails, filter important messages, send automated responses, and set up Gmail Pub/Sub for real-time email automation. Estimated time: 20-30 minutes.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll have:

• OpenClaw integrated with your email (Gmail example)
• Automated email filtering and prioritization
• Smart email summaries and responses
• Real-time email notifications via Gmail Pub/Sub

Before starting:

• OpenClaw installed and running - Complete Getting Started Tutorial
• A channel connected - Follow Channel Setup Tutorial
• Gmail account (for Gmail Pub/Sub example) or email access
• Basic understanding of automation - Review Automation Tutorial

OpenClaw can manage emails through skills. Let's install a Gmail integration skill:

npx clawdhub@latest install gmail

Or ask OpenClaw to set up email management for you:

• "Set up Gmail integration for email management"
• "Create a skill to read and process my emails"
• "Help me automate email filtering"

OpenClaw will guide you through the setup process, including OAuth authentication if needed.

For Gmail, you'll need to set up OAuth credentials. OpenClaw can help you with this, or you can configure it manually:

Gmail OAuth Setup

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Create a new project or select existing one
3. Enable Gmail API
4. Create OAuth 2.0 credentials
5. Add credentials to OpenClaw configuration

Now let's create automations for common email tasks:

Example 1: Daily Email Summary

Get a summary of important emails every morning:

{
  "cron": {
    "jobs": [
      {
        "schedule": "0 9 * * *",
        "command": "agent --message 'Check my emails from the last 24 hours. Summarize important messages and flag any that need my attention.'"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Example 2: Gmail Pub/Sub Integration

For real-time email processing, set up Gmail Pub/Sub:

{
  "hooks": {
    "gmail": {
      "enabled": true,
      "topic": "your-pubsub-topic",
      "subscription": "your-subscription-name"
    }
  }
}

This enables real-time email notifications. When a new email arrives, OpenClaw can process it immediately.

You can ask OpenClaw to create custom email processing rules:

Example Requests

• "Filter emails from important senders and notify me immediately"
• "Auto-respond to emails with specific keywords"
• "Categorize emails and move them to appropriate folders"
• "Extract attachments and save them to a specific location"

OpenClaw will create skills or automation rules to handle these tasks based on your requirements.

Test your email automation by:

1. Send a test email to yourself
2. Ask OpenClaw to check your emails: "Check my inbox for new messages"
3. Verify processing - Check that OpenClaw can read and summarize emails
4. Test automation - Wait for scheduled time or trigger manually

Once basic email management works, explore advanced features:

• Smart Filtering - Use AI to identify important vs. spam emails
• Auto-Responses - Generate context-aware email replies
• Email Summarization - Get concise summaries of long email threads
• Attachment Processing - Automatically process PDFs, images, and documents
• Calendar Integration - Extract meeting requests and add to calendar