Daily email summary with action items, mailed by Gmail

Daily email summary with action items, mailed by Gmail

An n8n workflow that runs at 7:00 every day and fetches the Gmail messages received since the start of yesterday. It gathers their
senders, recipients and previews into one item and asks OpenAI for a summary and a list of action items, each with a name. A last
step mails the result as a styled HTML email to the recipients you choose.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, five nodes that run and four sticky notes. It holds no credential.
• README.md: these notes.

What we changed from the original copy

• The credential links on the Gmail and OpenAI nodes were removed. Select your own.
• The model is now gpt-6-luna, in place of gpt-4o-mini. See "Good to know" for the dates.
• The search in Fetch Emails Past 24 Hours began with a company mailbox address. It now begins with the placeholder
  <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>.
• The recipient and the CC address in Send Summary Morning are now the placeholders <TEAM_EMAIL_ADDRESS> and
  <CC_EMAIL_ADDRESS>.
• The HTML title and the footer carried the original author's company name and mailbox. The title is now "Email Summary" and the
  footer says "Generated by an n8n workflow".
• The model's points and action items are escaped before they go into the HTML, so a < or an & in them cannot change the
  layout of the email.
• The sticky note over the search now says the search starts at the beginning of yesterday, which is what the search does, and
  where to put your address.
• Four node names carried a spaced hyphen. They now read without it, and the connections follow them.
• Nothing else. The schedule, the prompt, the style and the workflow's settings, including its timezone, are as they were.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• A Gmail account and a Gmail OAuth2 credential in n8n. Both Gmail nodes use it, one to read mail and one to send.
• An OpenAI API key.
• The email address of the mailbox and the addresses that should get the summary.

Set it up

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Add a Gmail OAuth2 credential and select it in Fetch Emails Past 24 Hours and in Send Summary Morning.
3. Add an OpenAI credential and select it in Summarize Emails with OpenAI Morning.
4. In Fetch Emails Past 24 Hours, put your mailbox address where the search says <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>.
5. In Send Summary Morning, replace <TEAM_EMAIL_ADDRESS> with the recipient and <CC_EMAIL_ADDRESS> with the CC address, or
   remove the CC.
6. Open the workflow's settings and set the timezone you want. The file asks for Asia/Kolkata.
7. Click Test workflow. The summary should arrive in the recipient's inbox.
8. Save and press Publish at the top of the canvas (or Shift+P) to start the daily run.

How a run goes

1. Daily 7AM Trigger starts the run at 7:00 each day in the workflow's timezone.
2. Fetch Emails Past 24 Hours runs a Gmail search made of your address and after: yesterday's date, with Return All on.
3. Organize Email Data Morning folds all messages into one item. It keeps the fields id, From, To, CC and snippet.
4. Summarize Emails with OpenAI Morning sends that data with a prompt that asks for key details, issues to look at and action
   items. It asks for a JSON answer with summary_of_emails, a list of points, and actions, a list of names with an action each.
5. Send Summary Morning fills an HTML template with the points and the actions and mails it. The subject holds yesterday's date
   and today's date.

Change the look

• What the model reports: the prompt in Summarize Emails with OpenAI Morning. Keep the JSON shape, since the email template reads it.
• The model: the same node.
• Which mail is read: the search in Fetch Emails Past 24 Hours.
• Which fields the model sees: the list in Organize Email Data Morning.
• The look of the email: the HTML and CSS in Send Summary Morning.
• The time: Daily 7AM Trigger, and the timezone in the workflow's settings.

Good to know

• Model: OpenAI's deprecations page, read on 12 November 2026, lists gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18 with a shutdown on 14 January 2027
  and names gpt-6-luna as the replacement. The node has no tools, so the swap is a plain model change.
• JSON answer: the node asks OpenAI for JSON mode. OpenAI's structured outputs guide lists JSON mode for the GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and
  GPT-4o families and compatible GPT-5 models, and the gpt-6-luna page lists structured outputs as supported without naming JSON
  mode. Check the first run. If OpenAI refuses it, turn off Output Content as JSON in the node and ask for JSON in the prompt.
• Not run: Mindket made no call to Gmail or OpenAI. The search expression and the two HTML expressions that now escape text were run
  offline with sample values.
• Timezone: the file sets Asia/Kolkata, so 7:00 means 7:00 in India until you change it.
• Window: after: takes a date, so the search covers everything from the start of yesterday to the 7:00 run, which is more than the
  24 hours its name suggests. The subject line says the same, from 00:00 yesterday to 7:00 today.
• Fields: the model never sees the subject lines, only the sender, the recipients and the preview. The CC name in the field list
  can also differ in case from the Cc header the Gmail node asks for, so check that the CC list reaches the model if you need it.
• Size: Return All has no limit, so a busy mailbox gives the model a long input and the run can cost more.
• A message can carry text meant to steer the model, and the summary is mailed on to others. Read the first summaries before you
  rely on them.
• The senders, recipients and previews of your mail go to OpenAI, and the summary goes to the recipients you set.