How to connect Claude to your email inbox

What you need

• A Claude account that can add custom connectors. Anthropic decides which plans can do this, and it changes from time to time, so check their help pages if you cannot find the option.
• A Spaces account. Your trial starts when you connect a chat account, with no card needed.
• The Email account your customers already message you on.
• A short note about your business: what you sell, prices, opening hours and the things you never want promised. You will paste it into Claude later.
• About ten minutes for the setup, and a little longer to try it on a few real messages.

Step 1: connect your Email account to Spaces

You sign in to Gmail or Outlook through a secure link and approve the connection, or enter your mail server details for any other mailbox. Your account stays yours, and you keep using it on your phone as normal.

Once it is connected, the account shows in your Spaces dashboard. Connecting does not send anything. It only means Spaces can read and send on that account when an AI agent you have added asks it to.

Connect the mailbox your customers write to, such as hello@ or your own address. Claude will be able to read the emails in it, so if you share a mailbox with personal mail, think about whether a separate business address would be better.

Step 2: add Spaces to Claude

1. Open Customize, then Connectors, then Add custom connector.
2. Name it Spaces and paste https://api.spacesos.com/mcp as the URL.
3. Choose Sign in, then sign in to Spaces and approve access.
4. On a Team or Enterprise plan, an owner adds it once under Organization settings, then Connectors.

To check it worked: Open the Search and tools menu in a chat. Spaces and its tools are listed.

You sign in on Spaces' own page during this step, so Claude never sees your Email login or your Spaces password. If Spaces does not show up:

• Open a new chat and check the Spaces connector is turned on in it.
• Sign in to Spaces again from the connector, in case the first sign-in did not finish.
• Remove the connector and add it again, checking the address is exactly https://api.spacesos.com/mcp.
• If it still does not appear, Anthropic's help pages have their current steps, and our Claude setup page has ours.

Step 3: try it

Open a new chat in Claude, make sure Spaces is turned on, and ask in plain words:

• Which customer emails from the last two days still need a reply?
• Summarise the thread with Mrs Okafor and draft a reply.
• Save drafts in my mailbox for every question about opening hours, and do not send them.
• What attachments did clients send this week?

Start with a question that only reads, like the first one. It shows you that Claude can see your Email messages before you let it send anything. Then try a draft, read it carefully, and only then let it send.

Good to know

Claude acts when you ask it to in a chat. It does not watch your inbox on its own. For replies around the clock, use an agent that runs all the time, such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw or Hermes, or set up a Spaces routine that sends set replies to set questions.

In practice, treat Claude as a quick helper you sit down with a few times a day: first thing, at lunchtime and before you close. Each time, ask what came in, check its drafts and let it send the ones you are happy with. Customers who message in between wait until your next session, just as they would if you were answering by hand.

A Spaces routine is not an AI. It sends a reply you wrote in advance when something happens, such as a new message or a keyword. That makes it a good way to send "Thanks for your message, we will reply first thing tomorrow" after hours, while Claude writes the real answers in your next session.

Ask Claude to save replies as drafts in your mailbox while you get started. You then read and send them from Gmail or Outlook as normal.

What Spaces lets Claude do with email

• List and read emails and their attachments in the mailbox you connected.
• Reply on an existing thread, so the customer sees one tidy conversation.
• Send one new email to one person, with up to four people in cc.
• Save a draft in your mailbox for you to check and send yourself.

Spaces does not send bulk email, bcc or tracking, and it refuses to reply to someone who has asked not to be emailed. A new chat here is a new email thread. Replies on a thread someone started are not held back by the warm-up. Spaces sends one email at a time to one person, never bulk email.

A worked example: an accountant's inbox in January

Here is how a session might go for a small accountancy practice in tax return season. Names and details are examples.

The owner then opened Outlook, read each draft, changed one word in Ben's and sent all six. Nothing left the mailbox until the owner pressed send.

Drafts first, then replies

Email replies tend to be longer and more formal than chat messages, and they are often kept and forwarded. That makes the draft-first approach especially useful. A simple path:

1. For the first week or two, ask Claude to save every reply as a draft in your mailbox.
2. Send them yourself from Gmail or Outlook, editing where needed.
3. Each time you edit a draft, tell Claude why, then add the lesson to your Project instructions.
4. Once a kind of email is always right, such as opening hours or document checklists, let Claude reply on the thread directly.
5. Keep fees for named work, complaints and anything legal as drafts for good.

Notes to give Claude for email

Put these in a Claude Project for your inbox, so every session starts with them:

You help me answer email for Patel & Co, a small accountancy practice.
Fees: first personal tax return from £250. Never quote for company accounts, I do that.
Deadlines: we need everything by the 20th to file by the 31st January.
Documents checklist: [paste it here].
Meetings: Tue and Thu afternoons are flexible. Never book, suggest times.
Tone: polite and clear, short paragraphs, sign off "Best wishes, Anita".
Always: reply on the existing thread. Save as a draft unless I say send.
Never: give tax advice on a client's situation in email. Offer a call instead.

Gmail, Outlook and other mailboxes

You sign in to Gmail or Outlook through a secure link and approve the connection, or enter your mail server details for any other mailbox. Once it is connected, Claude works with every mailbox the same way, so you can follow this guide whichever you use.

Google and Microsoft set their own limits on how many emails an account can send and can suspend accounts that send spam. Spaces keeps well inside those by sending one email at a time to one person, at the pace in the table below.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Letting Claude start new threads with people who did not write to you. Keep to replies, and to people who expect your email.
• Using it for a newsletter or announcement. Spaces is for one-to-one email, and a mailing tool is the right place for lists.
• Leaving out the sign-off and tone, so replies sound unlike you.
• Asking for advice-style answers by email that should be a conversation. Offer a call instead.
• Forgetting that the drafts are in your mailbox. Check the drafts folder before you close for the day.

Summing up

With Spaces, Claude can read your inbox, reply on threads or save drafts in Gmail, Outlook or any other mailbox, one email at a time. Start with drafts you send yourself, keep your notes in a Project, and let Claude reply directly only on the questions it always gets right.

How Spaces keeps your account safe

Whatever you ask, Spaces keeps your Email account inside safe limits: at least 30 seconds between messages, up to 80 a day, and 40 new conversations a day at most, with a gentler start for a newly connected account. If the agent tries to go faster, Spaces holds the message and says when it can try again.

New conversations warm up over the first weeks after you connect:

A new chat here is a new email thread. Replies on a thread someone started are not held back by the warm-up. Spaces sends one email at a time to one person, never bulk email.

These are Spaces' own limits. They lower the risk of a restriction, but they cannot remove it, because Email makes its own decisions about accounts. Read the note at the top of this page before you connect.

Pricing

Plans from $19 a month

Which email providers work?

Gmail and Outlook through a secure sign-in, and most other mailboxes with your mail server details.

Can Claude save drafts instead of sending?

Yes. Ask it to save drafts and they appear in your mailbox's drafts folder, ready for you to check and send yourself.

Can Claude send a newsletter or a mailshot?

No. Spaces sends one email to one person at a time, with no bcc and no tracking. Use a mailing tool for lists.

Will Claude answer emails while I am away?

No. Claude acts when you ask it in a chat and does not watch your inbox. A Spaces routine can email you a summary of unread messages, so you know what is waiting.

Can Claude read attachments?

Spaces can fetch attachments from your emails for Claude. What Claude can make of them depends on Claude and the kind of file.

Does Claude see my email password?

For Gmail and Outlook you sign in through Spaces' secure link, and Claude signs in to Spaces, so Claude never sees your email login.

What if someone asks not to be emailed again?

Spaces refuses to reply to someone who has asked not to be emailed, whatever Claude is asked to do.