Every 5 minutes

Get pinged when an important email arrives

Emails from the people or companies you care about are flagged within minutes, with sender, subject and a link.

Runs: Every 5 minutes
Apps: Gmail
AI: Not needed
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: check my Gmail every 5 minutes and tell me in Slack when I get an email from anyone at acme.com, with the sender, subject and a link.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Most inboxes bury the two or three senders you can never afford to miss. A message from your boss asking for a number before a meeting, a reply from the client who is about to sign, a note from your accountant about a deadline: each looks like every other line in Gmail, and by the time you scroll to it the moment has passed. Muting everything else is not realistic when you also work with customers.

A Gmail search you write, such as from:boss@company.com OR from:bigclient.com, is run every 5 minutes. Messages it finds that you have not been told about are sent to Slack with the sender, subject, a snippet of the text and a link, and their IDs are remembered so there is exactly one ping per email.

Account managers, executives and freelancers with one or two key relationships get the most from a personal VIP filter like this.

What you get out of it

The messages that matter reach your phone
A Slack notification for your boss or a key client's email arrives even when your Gmail app is silenced, so the one reply that is time sensitive does not wait until you next open the inbox.
You decide who counts as important
Because the trigger is a normal Gmail search, any query you can type works, from a single address to a domain, a label or a subject phrase like contract renewal.
Notification overload does not return
Only matching messages ping you, and each does so once, so you can keep everything else muted and still trust that a call for your attention will come through. Your attention stays on the work in front of you.
Snippets let you triage from the notification
Seeing sender, subject and the first lines tells you in seconds whether to reply now or finish what you are doing, without opening Gmail and losing your place in a task.
Key contacts feel prioritized
Prompt replies to your most valuable contacts are noticed, and over months the reputation for answering quickly with key clients and managers is worth more than any single saved hour.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 5 minutes ClickRuntime runs your Gmail search, for example everything from a key client's domain.
It skips emails it has already alerted you about.
Each new match is posted to your Slack channel with the sender, the subject and a link that opens the email in Gmail.

Before it runs live

Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail

What you get

RunsEvery 5 minutes

Get pinged when an important email arrivestoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #inboxEmail from Dana Park <dana@acme.com>: Contract redlines attached https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/19a2f0c3d4e5b6a7

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Gmail steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

alert_on_emails_matching_a_search.pyexample

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, report_fetched, credentials, state, notify

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    gmail = build("gmail", "v1", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    msgs = gmail.users().messages().list(userId="me", q="from:acme.com newer_than:1d").execute().get("messages", [])
    seen = set(state.get("seen") or [])
    new = [m for m in msgs if m["id"] not in seen]
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    for m in new:
        meta = gmail.users().messages().get(userId="me", id=m["id"], format="metadata", metadataHeaders=["From", "Subject"]).execute()
        h = {x["name"]: x["value"] for x in meta["payload"]["headers"]}
        notify.slack(f"Email from {h.get('From')}: {h.get('Subject')}\nhttps://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/{m['id']}",
                     channel="#inbox")
        seen.add(m["id"])
    state.set("seen", sorted(seen)[-500:])
    return {"alerted": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

What search syntax can I use?

Anything Gmail's search box accepts, including from:, to:, subject:, label:, has:attachment and OR groups. If a query works when you type it into Gmail, it will work here, and you can refine it whenever your priorities shift.

Will I get an alert for emails already sitting in my inbox?

No. Messages that existed before the first run are treated as already seen, and only mail arriving afterward triggers a ping. Each match is recorded after it is posted, so it will not alert you twice.

Can the alert go to a different place than Slack?

Yes. The same search can send a text-style message to another channel or an email to your phone, or several places at once. You describe where you want it and approve the change. The rest of the flow stays as it is.

What permissions does it need?

read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Every 5-10 minutesAI