Who this is for.
For the moms who triage a lot of mail, this page is the upgrade path to a dedicated Inbox Command Center.
- Claude → left sidebar → Projects → + Create Project.
- Name: Inbox Command Center (or "Inbox & Schedule" — whatever you'll recognize).
- Description: paste the one below.
- Save. Keep the tab open — there are two more things to add.
Inbox Command Center description
My email triage and schedule assembly assistant. I paste in emails, group texts, school documents, voice brain-dumps, and calendar snippets. It gives me back clean action lists, drafted replies in my voice, and calendar-ready event files. No motivational fluff — just the plan.
Upload one file: the Open Loops doc.
The single file that makes this Project powerful is a running "Open Loops" doc — things you're waiting on, things you owe people, things you're not ready to action yet. Every time you do a Sunday Assembly, you add to it. Every time Claude does a triage, it can pull from it.
Open Loops template — copy, fill in roughly, save as OpenLoops.txt, upload
OPEN LOOPS — updated [date]
WAITING ON OTHERS:
- [e.g., Dr. Patel's office — called about Emma's follow-up, waiting for call back, left msg 10/14]
- [e.g., Coach Mike — asked about Saturday game change, no reply yet]
I OWE SOMEONE A REPLY:
- [e.g., PTA volunteer sign-up email — need to respond by Friday]
- [e.g., Grandma — group-text question about Thanksgiving plans]
PENDING DECISIONS (not ready to action):
- [e.g., Sam's birthday theme — need to check with him]
- [e.g., Spring break travel vs. staycation]
RECURRING CHECKS:
- [e.g., check school portal every Monday for upcoming events]
- [e.g., weekly grocery restock on Thursdays]
- Copy the template above, paste into a plain text editor, fill in a rough version of your actual loops (doesn't have to be complete — you'll refine as you go).
- Save it as
OpenLoops.txt on your computer.
- In the Inbox Command Center Project → Files panel → Add content → upload the file. (Same flow as the Family Factsheet in what you upload.)
Optional — upload your Family Factsheet too.
If your Inbox Command Center will be drafting replies about your kids (it will), upload the same Family Factsheet you built for the Family Manager. Same file, same purpose — Claude needs to know the players.
Custom instructions — the specialized version.
The Family Manager's instructions from the custom-instructions lesson are too general for this Project. Paste this in as the Inbox Command Center's instructions instead — it's built for triage and scheduling specifically.
Inbox Command Center custom instructions — copy, personalize the brackets
You are my email triage and schedule assembly assistant. Use the Family Factsheet and Open Loops file as context for every response.
WHEN I PASTE AN EMAIL, default to the "three things" format unless I specify otherwise:
1. One-sentence summary of what the sender wants
2. Action items with deadlines
3. A draft reply in my voice — short, warm, no over-apologizing
WHEN I PASTE A GROUP TEXT, default to three lists: decisions made, still open, what I personally committed to.
WHEN I PASTE A SCHOOL DOCUMENT OR NEWSLETTER, default to a date-extraction table, then offer to output a .ics file.
WHEN I PASTE A BRAIN DUMP, default to the four-bucket sort: errands, calendar, messages, thinking — then the one thing to do first.
VOICE:
- Match my tone from the Factsheet (warm, [your adjectives])
- Never use "I hope this email finds you well," "circle back," "per my last email," "please don't hesitate"
- Keep replies short unless the situation genuinely needs length
- Sign off the way I sign off: [your real sign-off]
NEVER:
- Add motivational commentary ("you've got this!")
- Invent details (dates, names, commitments) — ask me instead
- Give me a 14-item today list. Max 5 on a today list unless I override
TIME ZONE for all scheduling: [your zone, e.g., Eastern Time]
When I ask for a calendar output, always produce a .ics code block ready to save as a file.
Run your first real triage right now.
Save the instructions, start a new chat inside Inbox Command Center, and paste in one real email from your inbox. Watch Claude default to the three-things format — no re-explaining, no "give me three things" prompt needed. That's the whole point of specialized Projects: the format is baked in.
How this fits into your actual days.
With Inbox Command Center running alongside Family Manager, here's how a normal week splits the work:
The two-Project rhythm
- Family Manager — weekend plans, birthday parties, school email drafts, big-picture family decisions, plus the meal-planning capability you added in your meal-planner build (weekly dinners, grocery lists, pantry-based improvising).
- Inbox Command Center — inbox triage, school paper extraction, group-text sorting, Sunday Assembly, calendar exports.
School Inbox → Dashboard, hands-off.
With Cowork's Gmail connector turned on, you can hand the whole school-email triage off — Cowork reads the messages directly from Gmail, extracts the dates and action items, and writes them into your dashboard's Today and Priorities blocks. No copying, no forwarding, no extra app.
One prompt sets it up. Run it once, and from then on every school email gets parsed automatically the next time you open your dashboard. If a school email isn't there, nothing happens — it's not a chatty assistant, it's a quiet one.
Cowork School Inbox dispatch — paste into Inbox Command Center
SCHOOL INBOX DISPATCH — set this up once, runs whenever I open my dashboard.
Using Cowork's Gmail connector, scan the last 14 days of emails matching any of these senders/keywords:
- [your kids' school domains, e.g., @elementary.district.org]
- [teacher names from the Family Factsheet]
- subject contains: "field trip", "early dismissal", "permission", "spirit week", "conference", "picture day", "school closed"
For each matching email, extract:
1. Event/action name
2. Date (and time if specified)
3. Which kid it applies to (use Family Factsheet to disambiguate)
4. What I have to do or send (form, money, costume, RSVP)
5. Deadline for my action
Save the result as an artifact named exactly current-school-loops (overwrite any existing — one live "what's coming from school" file). Format: a short table with columns Date | Kid | Event | What I Send | Deadline.
Then update current-week-priorities: any school item with a deadline in the next 7 days gets added to the top of the Priorities list with the kid's name in brackets.
Skip emails I've already actioned (look for my replies in the same thread). Don't invent dates — if a date is fuzzy ("next week"), flag it as "needs clarifying" instead of guessing.