n8n Gmail Triage & Auto-Reply with GPT-4.1 Mini + Telegram

Instant Gmail inbox triage with AI—auto-reply, label for review, or flag spam (with Telegram notifications)

Turn unread emails in your Gmail into an organized workflow: this n8n automation reads new messages, uses OpenAI GPT-4.1 mini to classify and draft responses, then either auto-replies, sends a Human Review summary to Telegram, or applies a spam/unwanted label. No more manual sorting.

What this workflow does

• Monitors your Gmail inbox (default label: INBOX) and triggers every minute when a new unread email arrives.
• Fetches full email details from Gmail (headers and body) for accurate AI analysis.
• Uses OpenAI GPT-4.1 mini to classify each email (including category, priority, sentiment) and produce a structured decision: reply_type plus a reply draft when appropriate.
• Normalizes the AI output into a consistent JSON format with safe fallbacks to keep the workflow reliable.
• If the AI selects “Auto Reply”: sends a Gmail reply using the suggested draft.
• If the AI selects “Human Review”: applies a Gmail label and sends the analysis summary to Telegram for a human to handle.
• If the AI selects “No Reply”: applies a Gmail label to mark the message as spam/unwanted.

Use cases

• SaaS operators who want faster handling of support emails—auto-respond when safe, otherwise route to review.
• Automation engineers who need a practical Gmail triage pipeline with AI classification and routing.
• Teams that want a Telegram “inbox digest” for the emails that require attention.

Technical details

• n8n Gmail Trigger (polls every minute for unread emails under a selected label).
• Gmail actions to fetch message content and apply labels / send replies.
• OpenAI GPT-4.1 mini for email classification, prioritization, sentiment, and reply drafting.
• Code node to validate/normalize AI output into consistent JSON.
• Switch node to branch logic by reply_type.
• Telegram node to notify a chat with the Human Review summary.
• Additional workflow notes via Sticky Note.

Setup highlights: connect Gmail OAuth2, choose the human-review label, select (or keep) the model default gpt-4.1-mini, and provide Telegram Bot credentials + chat ID.