n8n Gmail Cleanup Workflow: OpenRouter Email Classifier

Weekly Gmail Cleanup with OpenRouter—Keep what matters, delete the rest

This n8n Gmail Cleanup workflow scans your inbox weekly, classifies unread emails from Social, Promotions, and Updates using OpenRouter, and deletes only the messages flagged as clutter (DELETE)—leaving important mail intact (KEEP).

What this workflow does

Designed for n8n automation engineers and SaaS operators, the workflow follows a simple, safe-by-default process:

• Runs on a weekly schedule via a schedule trigger.
• Fetches up to 25 unread Gmail messages from these Gmail categories/labels:
  • CATEGORY_SOCIAL
  • CATEGORY_PROMOTIONS
  • CATEGORY_UPDATES
• Sends each email’s ID, subject, and snippet to an OpenRouter LLM with rules that default to KEEP for potentially important emails.
• Deletes only when the model response is exactly “DELETE”.

Use cases

• Inbox hygiene for busy operators: reduce unread noise from promotions/social updates without manually reviewing everything.
• Team mailbox maintenance: run periodic cleanups on a dedicated mailbox where you want consistent filtering.
• Automation engineers testing safe AI triage: validate a deterministic “DELETE only on exact match” approach before scaling.

Technical details

• n8n Nodes / Tech stack: schedule trigger, if, Gmail, and OpenRouter LLM via n8nn8n-nodes-langchainchain / n8nn8n-nodes-langchainlm with Chat OpenRouter.
• Integrations:
  • Gmail: OAuth2 connection with permission to read and delete messages.
  • OpenRouter: API key/credential; select an available model (e.g., openai/gpt-oss-120b:free).
• Configurable controls: schedule timing, label filters, and per-category limit (default 25), plus a customizable KEEP/DELETE classification prompt.