Teach a Morning Inbox Routine by Demonstration

Part 2 built Inbox and taught it to draft, never send. This page is the upgrade that makes the morning pass happen without you asking. You do the job once with the bot watching. Then you save the routine. Then it runs on a weekday clock.

Do not start here if you do not have an Inbox bot yet. Go do part 2. A routine on a bot that still invents facts or tries to send is a scheduled accident.

Why demonstration beats a written SOP

A pasted checklist is a hope. A demonstration is a recording of what you actually click. Grok Bot can follow along the next time you do a job, save the steps, take corrections, and run them later, including on a schedule. That is the product feature. Use it. Do not write a 40-line prompt that pretends to be the same thing.

The official line is still "message it like a teammate." The routine is what you save after the teammate has done the job the way you want, not before. If the first two mornings still produced a brief you would not sign, you do not have a routine yet. You have homework.

The morning pass you will demonstrate

Keep the pass small enough to finish in fifteen minutes of your time. The bot does the reading. You do the decisions. This is the shape from part 2, now treated as the thing you will perform on camera:

1. Open the one Gmail this bot is signed into.
2. Unread count, plus how many can wait.
3. The five threads that need you today, one sentence each, oldest first inside that five.
4. An unsent draft sitting on each of those five.
5. A separate "do not miss" list: bills, legal, school, medical, anything with a date.

If your real morning also files newsletters into a label, include that. If it does not, do not add it "for completeness." The bot will copy whatever you show, including the junk.

Tell it to follow along

Open Inbox. Send this before you start clicking:

Follow along this morning. I am about to do the weekday inbox pass in this Gmail.

Watch the tabs I open, the labels I use, the five threads I pick, and how I leave drafts unsent. Do not help yet. Do not send anything. When I say "that's the pass," write back the steps you saw, in order, in my words. I will correct the list before we save anything.

Then do the pass the way you want every weekday to look. Talk out loud in the thread if a click is not obvious: "this one is Noise because it is a promo, not because the sender is new." The bot cannot see why you skipped a thread unless you say it.

When you are done, send that's the pass. Read the step list it writes back. Fix the lies. Typical ones: it thought you archived a thread you only opened, it listed six threads, it called a draft a send. Correct those in the same thread. "Use this shape from now on" is the line that sticks.

Save the routine only after you would sign the output

Two clean weekday mornings is the bar. Not two in a row at 11pm. Two mornings where the five threads match what you would have picked, the drafts are in your voice, and nothing left the mailbox.

Then ask it to save the routine. Say the outcome, the clock, and the stop:

Save this as a routine named Morning inbox.

Run it on weekdays at 7:30am America/New_York. When I have not opened the laptop yet, still run it.

Deliverable, sitting in this thread before 8am:
- Unread count, plus how many can wait
- Five threads that need me, one sentence each
- An unsent draft on each of those five
- Do-not-miss list

Hard stop: never send, never delete, never archive a thread I have not seen, never invent a date or a price. If Gmail is logged out or 2FA is in the way, stop and tell me. Do not guess.

If the product asks you to confirm the saved steps, read them. A routine that says "send the drafts" is a defective routine. Delete it and demonstrate again. Do not "fix it later."

Corrections that belong in the routine

The first scheduled run will be slightly wrong. That is the point of week one with a clock. Correct in the thread, then tell it the correction is standing:

• "School and medical always go on the do-not-miss list, even if they look like newsletters."
• "If a thread is already in Drafts from yesterday and still needs me, reuse that draft. Do not start a second one."
• "Never put a vendor pitch in the five. That is the can-wait count."
• "My first sentence does not start with 'I hope this finds you well.'"

One correction per message is easier to save than a paragraph of new policy. The bot should be able to repeat the rule back in a short sentence. If it cannot, you were vague.

What a good 7:30 brief looks like

You should be able to read it on your phone in two minutes. Here is the shape, not the content. Yours will name real people and real dates.

Unread 41. 33 can wait.

Need you today
1. Invoice from [vendor] — due Friday, draft asks for the PO.
2. [Name] on the [project] thread — wants a yes/no on the Monday slot.
3. School form — signature, not a reply. Draft is a note to yourself.
4. [Client] asked for the file you already have. Draft attaches nothing; it says you will send after you confirm.
5. Recruiter follow-up — one-line decline, unsent.

Do not miss
- Electric bill, due the 3rd
- [Kid] physical reminder, Thursday

If the brief needs a scroll, it failed. Five threads. One do-not-miss list. Drafts that already exist in Gmail, not pasted into the chat as if that were the same thing.

When the routine should refuse to run

Write these as stops, not as "be careful":

• Gmail session is dead, a captcha is up, or 2FA is waiting. Stop. You log in. The bot does not type the code.
• It cannot see the mailbox it is assigned. It does not open a different Gmail "just to help."
• The five-thread list would include a legal hold, a HR complaint, or a message from your lawyer. Surface those on do-not-miss. Do not draft.
• It wants to send, auto-reply, or "clear the inbox." That is a bug. Kill the run.

iOS is how you review. Read the brief and open the drafts on your phone. Send from the phone only after you have opened the draft. Never approve a send from a lock-screen summary. The routine can run with the laptop closed. The send button cannot.

What this routine must never do

Same list as part 2, now with a clock attached, which makes it more dangerous if you get sloppy:

• Never send. Not on a schedule. Not "since you usually approve these."
• Never delete or archive to hit a zero-unread goal.
• Never create a filter that hides a sender you have not named.
• Never forward a thread outside the mailbox.
• Never pay, click a "verify your account" link, or use a password from mail.

Part 6 is the longer version. The short version is still: the routine exists to make the send button easier for you to press at 8:05. It does not press it at 7:31.

Done when

The morning routine is real when all of this has happened without you prompting it:

• A weekday 7:30 run finished while the laptop was closed.
• The brief in the thread named the same five threads you would have picked.
• Five unsent drafts were in Gmail, and you used at least two after a light edit.
• A correction you made on Tuesday showed up as standing behavior on Wednesday.
• Nothing left the mailbox without you.

When that is boring, the next lesson is turning those threads into follow-ups and calendar work. You do not need that to get your mornings back. A routine that already drafts the five is the whole win for this page.