Do you need full access to my email?

No, and you shouldn't grant it. I use scoped OAuth permissions covering only the actions the automation genuinely needs — typically reading incoming mail and creating drafts. The access appears in your Google or Microsoft admin console and can be revoked at any moment without changing anyone's password. I'll tell you the exact scopes before you approve them.

Can it send email as my main business address?

Yes, though it takes deliberate configuration rather than a checkbox — sending or drafting as accounts@yourbusiness.com when the authenticated account is a different address is a genuine setup step that trips a lot of people up. I've done it in production and written up the process in detail, so it's a solved problem rather than an experiment.

Solution

Get Your Inbox Under Control

For most small businesses the inbox isn't a communication tool. It's an unsorted to-do list that other people can add to.

The problem

A single business inbox typically carries customer enquiries, supplier invoices, bookings, internal messages, notifications and marketing, all mixed together and all arriving at once. Working out what needs doing is a task in itself, performed several times a day.

The consequences are predictable: invoices found after the due date, enquiries buried under notifications, and the same handful of replies typed out again and again from scratch.

What I automate

Triage before you open it

Mail classified on arrival — enquiry, invoice, supplier, internal, noise — and routed, labelled or escalated accordingly.

Invoices extracted, not filed away

Attachments read, amounts, dates and references pulled out, and the data pushed into accounting rather than retyped.

Replies drafted in your voice

The messages you send constantly, prepared with the right details, waiting in drafts for a quick review.

Nothing left hanging

Threads that need a reply and haven't had one surface again instead of sinking down the list.

I run this myself

Claude Email is my own application doing exactly this: connecting to a Google account with explicit authorisation, finding invoices in incoming mail, and preparing draft replies for review.

Building it taught me the parts that actually matter — permission scopes, sending from the correct business address, and making sure a draft always reaches a human before a customer. I've published the full technical write-up of the Gmail authentication work, including the bit the official documentation skips.

Typical starting scope

One inbox, connected with scoped OAuth access you can revoke
Three to five classification categories agreed with you
Invoice extraction into your accounting software
Draft-only replies for the first phase
Weekly review of what it got right and wrong

FAQ