“Emails from my boss get buried, so I want them moved into their own folder.”
You don't need AI for this
You don't need AI for this. 2 steps, nothing to interpret — a plain rule does the same job for nothing.
Only 2 actions, a single helper, almost no back-and-forth. A filter in the system you already use will do this.
Only 2 actions, a single helper — this looks like a rule, not a judgement call.
Quick enough that there isn't much to win per run.
you told us it's 1 minutes each
$95 of time a month against $1.19 to run it.
we treat inside 12 months as worth doing and past 18 as not — those cut-offs are our judgement, not arithmetic
Often enough that saved minutes add up.
you said "about once a day", 4 each time — that's about 88 a month
- At 90 a month this doesn't pay for itself — it would take 64 months. You'd need about 470 a month before it's worth building.
- That $6,000 is what it costs to get this running reliably — setup, a test set, and the first month of fixing it. Set it up yourself over a weekend instead and it's nearer $650 — payback drops to about 6.9 months.
$6,000 ÷ (12 months × $1.07 saved per run) = 470 a month
Take it to a builder
We don't build it. Your builder does that better than we ever could — it knows every one of its own connectors. Copy this and paste it in.
Open n8n, start a new workflow, and click the ✨ AI button. Paste this in.
Paste into n8n's AI workflow builder. Names the real nodes and says what n8n won't enforce.
Build me this workflow. I've had it designed already — the detail below is deliberate, so please follow it rather than simplifying it. ## What it should do Move any email from one particular person into its own folder. **Finished looks like:** Nothing from that person sits in the main inbox. ## When it should run Daily Use a Schedule Trigger node (n8n-nodes-base.scheduleTrigger). ## The steps, in order 1. **read inbox** — Look at new mail. 2. **move to folder** — Put the message in a folder. ## Accounts to connect - Email (Gmail or Outlook) Use my own credentials for each. Don't hardcode anything. ## Must-haves — please don't skip these - One step changes something outside the system: move to folder. Point it at a test account first. - Don't retry automatically. Nothing here says which errors are safe to retry, and retrying a write without a dedupe key applies it twice. - Give up after 2 steps across the whole run rather than looping. ## What n8n won't enforce on its own A workflow engine. Strong on steps and approvals, blind to agent loops. So after you've built it, these are on me — please leave a note in the workflow for each: - **Iteration ceiling** — the design asks for stop after 2 iterations. Add an execution counter and hard-fail past the limit, or the agent can loop until the bill stops it. - **Typed tool schemas** — the design asks for 2 tools with typed input schemas. Validate the payload yourself before the call, or the model will invent fields. --- Designed with RIG. RIG works out whether a job is worth automating and writes the brief — it doesn't build or run anything.
Their builder will get most of this right and some of it wrong — it always does. The part worth checking is the approvals: builders like adding a notification where the design asked for a hard stop. Everything under "what it won't enforce" is genuinely on you.