n8n Gmail AI Reply Drafts with Claude Sonnet + Sheets Log

Draft smart Gmail replies automatically—then log every AI decision to Google Sheets

This n8n workflow watches your Gmail Inbox for new unread messages, uses Anthropic Claude (Claude Sonnet) to determine whether a reply is needed, drafts the response in the original thread, and records the full AI decision (category, urgency, escalation) in a Google Sheets “Email Log”.

What this workflow does

• Monitors unread emails every minute in your Gmail Inbox, excluding Promotions and Social categories.
• Normalizes message data into consistent fields (sender name/address, subject, body, message ID, thread ID).
• Calls Anthropic Claude with your business profile (tone, facts, signature, and example replies) to classify the email and generate a JSON reply draft when appropriate.
• Parses and sanitizes Claude output, defaulting to a “no reply” response with an escalation flag if the JSON cannot be parsed.
• Creates a Gmail draft reply in the original thread when Claude indicates a reply is needed.
• Appends a row to Google Sheets with timestamp, sender, subject, category, urgency, escalation flag, reason, and whether a draft was created.

Use cases

• SaaS teams triaging inbound customer emails and generating consistent, on-brand drafts.
• Operations workflows where you want AI-assisted replies plus an auditable Email Log.
• n8n automation engineers who want a practical example of Gmail + Claude + Sheets with JSON parsing and safe fallbacks.

Technical details

• Integrations: Gmail (trigger + draft creation), Anthropic (Claude Sonnet), Google Sheets (log append).
• Workflow logic: if, set, code, gmail, plus a sticky note for guidance.
• Setup requirements: Gmail connected in both Gmail trigger and Gmail draft actions; add Anthropic credentials; configure Google Sheets with a worksheet named “Email Log” including the required columns (timestamp, from, subject, category, urge—plus the remaining fields used by the log).