Mail Action Items

Mail Action Items — Extract Tasks from Email

Time window: $ARGUMENTS (default: last 3 days)

Step 1: Find candidate emails with action signals

Subject-line signals

DB="$HOME/Library/Mail/V10/MailData/Envelope Index"
SINCE=$(($(date +%s) - 259200))  # 3 days default; adjust per $ARGUMENTS

sqlite3 "$DB" "
SELECT datetime(m.date_received,'unixepoch','localtime') as dt,
       s.subject, a.address as sender, a.comment as name,
       mb.url as mailbox, m.ROWID, m.read, m.is_urgent
FROM messages m
JOIN subjects  s  ON m.subject = s.ROWID
JOIN addresses a  ON m.sender  = a.ROWID
JOIN mailboxes mb ON m.mailbox = mb.ROWID
WHERE m.date_received >= ${SINCE}
  AND m.deleted = 0
  AND m.automated_conversation != 2
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Spam%' AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Trash%'
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Sent%'
  AND (
    s.subject LIKE '%action required%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%please review%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%approval%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%approve%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%sign off%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%deadline%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%due%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%RSVP%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%respond by%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%feedback%'
    OR s.subject LIKE '%request%'
    OR m.is_urgent = 1
    OR m.flagged = 1
  )
ORDER BY m.is_urgent DESC, m.date_received DESC;" 2>/dev/null

Urgent/flagged unread (always surface)

sqlite3 "$DB" "
SELECT datetime(m.date_received,'unixepoch','localtime') as dt,
       s.subject, a.address as sender, m.ROWID
FROM messages m
JOIN subjects s ON m.subject = s.ROWID
JOIN addresses a ON m.sender = a.ROWID
JOIN mailboxes mb ON m.mailbox = mb.ROWID
WHERE m.date_received >= ${SINCE}
  AND m.read = 0 AND m.deleted = 0
  AND m.automated_conversation != 2
  AND m.unsubscribe_type = 0
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Spam%' AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Trash%'
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Sent%'
ORDER BY m.date_received DESC;" 2>/dev/null

Step 2: Read bodies and extract action items

For each candidate email, parse the body:

python3 ~/.claude/skills/_mail-shared/parser.py   ...

Look for action-item patterns in the body text:

• "Please [verb]..." → direct request
• "Could you..." / "Can you..." → request
• "By [date]" / "Before [date]" / "Due [date]" → deadline
• "Let me know..." → response expected
• "Your approval is needed" / "Please approve" → approval required
• "Next steps:" / "Action items:" / "TODO:" → explicit task lists
• "Waiting on you" / "Pending your" → you're the blocker
• Meeting notes with "Suggested next steps" or your name + "will"

Step 3: Deduplicate and prioritize

• Group by sender/thread
• Prioritize: overdue deadlines > urgent flagged > approval requests > general requests
• For Jira/project management alerts, extract ticket ID and description

Output Format

Action Items from Your Email (last 3 days)

For each item:

• [ ] Task description — from [Sender], received [date]
• Context: [1-line summary from email body]
• Deadline: [if mentioned]

Group by: Overdue → Today → This week → No deadline Mark items from unread emails with [UNREAD].

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: aashari
• Source: aashari/ai-agent-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.