Summarize unread Gmail by date

What it is

This n8n workflow is a tool for other workflows to call, and it only reads. Whatever calls it passes one input named query, a request that names a day. OpenAI (gpt-4o) reads it with today’s date and answers with one date. The Gmail node fetches up to ten emails that are in the inbox and unread, received after that date. A second OpenAI step summarizes each email with its sender, Aggregate gathers the summaries into one list, and the last node sets response. Six nodes in all.

Who it suits

People who want to ask an assistant what they missed, and builders of n8n agents that need an inbox tool for it. Skip it if you need every unread email or a folder other than the inbox. It stops at ten messages and filters on the inbox label.

Where to use it

Inside a larger workflow, as the target of an Execute Workflow node or as a tool an AI agent can call. Any n8n works, as long as a Gmail account can be authorized in it.

Setup

Get it saves a zip with workflow.json and Mindket’s setup notes in your downloads folder. Its author puts setup at about 10 minutes.

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu, choose Import from File and pick workflow.json.
2. Add an OpenAI credential with your key and select it in both OpenAI and OpenAI1.
3. Add a Gmail credential, sign in with Google, and select it in Gmail.
4. Open When Executed by Another Workflow and check the field’s name. The file has query followed by a stray line break, so delete the break and let it read exactly query.
5. Run one test and open the input of Gmail: the date should be there (see Good to know).
6. Save and publish it, then open the calling workflow and choose this one in its Execute Workflow node or tool.

The caller passes one field and gets one back:

{
  "query": "unread emails from yesterday"
}

{
  "response": "<the summaries, one for each email>"
}

How to use it

Ask in plain words and name a day. For today or yesterday the date step returns midnight UTC of that day, and with no day named it uses today. The Gmail filter means received after that moment, so a request for yesterday returns every unread inbox email from the start of yesterday until now, today’s included. Each summary starts with the sender’s name and then gives a short account of the plain-text body.

Example

A caller passes the request from the fence above. The date step answers with yesterday at 00:00:00Z, Gmail returns up to ten unread messages since then, and the caller gets one short summary for each, headed by who sent it.

For newcomers and experts

If you are new. A tool workflow runs only when another workflow calls it. Unread and inbox are Gmail labels, and the workflow filters on both, so a message you have already opened is not included. Nothing is marked read or changed.

For experts. Gmail runs getAll with a limit of 10, label IDs INBOX and UNREAD, and simplify turned off, which returns the full message that the summary step needs for the sender and the body. Both OpenAI nodes use gpt-4o. The date step is told to answer with ISO 8601 and nothing else. The filter reads $json.date and falls back to the current time when that is empty.

Good to know

Check the date reaches Gmail. The risks after that are the cap and the privacy of your inbox.

• Date check: n8n’s OpenAI node usually returns a JSON answer under message.content, while the filter reads $json.date. If the date is not at the top level of Gmail’s input, the filter falls back to the moment of the run and finds nothing. Point receivedAfter at {{ $json.message.content.date }}
• Field name: the stray line break in the trigger’s field name is in the file, so fix it before the first call
• Cap: at most ten emails per call
• Privacy: each email’s sender name and text go to OpenAI
• Billing: one OpenAI request for the date, plus one per email
• Credentials: the JSON holds none, and nothing from its author’s account