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Triage flow

The shape of triage in mxr

Section titled “The shape of triage in mxr”

Email triage is a two-pass loop:

  1. First pass: classify each message — does it deserve attention now, later, or never?
  2. Second pass: actually deal with the “later” pile.

mxr ships three primitives that together make the loop fast.

Reply-later (first pass)

Section titled “Reply-later (first pass)”

The fastest decision: “I want to reply, just not now.” Press b on a message and it’s flagged as reply-later. The flag is local-only — never roundtrips to the provider.

Terminal window
mxr replies                        # see the queue
mxr replies add MESSAGE_ID         # add via CLI / agent
mxr replies remove MESSAGE_ID      # clear when done

Replying via any path automatically clears the flag (CLI mxr reply, TUI r).

Screener (first pass, by sender)

Section titled “Screener (first pass, by sender)”

The decision you make once per sender rather than per message:

  • allow — you want their mail in the inbox
  • deny — auto-trash + mark-read
  • feed — newsletters / non-urgent: skip inbox, route to a feed view
  • paper-trail — receipts / records: archive on ingest
Terminal window
mxr screener queue                 # senders waiting for a decision
mxr screener allow alice@example.com
mxr screener deny spammer@example.com
mxr screener feed newsletter@example.com
mxr screener paper-trail receipts@example.com

The screener is local-only by default. Mobile / web Gmail won’t see your decisions unless you opt in per-sender:

Terminal window
mxr screener feed newsletter@example.com --label "Newsletters"

When --label is set, the daemon mirrors the disposition as a real provider label so the categorisation rolls out to all your devices.

Custom snooze (first pass, defer)

Section titled “Custom snooze (first pass, defer)”

When “reply later” is too vague — you know exactly when this should come back. The --until parser accepts conversational forms:

Terminal window
mxr snooze --until "in 2h" MESSAGE_ID
mxr snooze --until "tomorrow 9am" MESSAGE_ID
mxr snooze --until "monday 17:00" MESSAGE_ID
mxr snooze --until "friday 5pm" MESSAGE_ID
mxr snooze --until "2026-06-01T15:00:00Z" MESSAGE_ID

Or the configured presets (tomorrow, weekend, tonight, monday) that resolve via your [snooze] config block.

The sender view (second pass)

Section titled “The sender view (second pass)”

When you’re working through the reply-later queue or following up with a specific person, mxr sender <addr> is the unfair advantage:

Terminal window
mxr sender alice@example.com

You see their volume in/out, your replied-to-them count, p50 cadence, when you last heard from them, and how many threads are open and waiting on you. No other email tool reasons over senders this way because the data is normally locked behind a provider API; mxr’s local SQLite makes it a single read.

Putting it together

Section titled “Putting it together”

A typical mxr triage session:

  1. Open inbox.
  2. For each unknown sender, press the relevant disposition: mxr screener allow|deny|feed|paper-trail.
  3. For each message you’ll engage with: press b (reply-later) or Z (snooze with a specific time).
  4. Run mxr replies later to walk the reply-later queue.
  5. Run mxr sender alice@example.com before replying to a specific person to get instant context.

The whole loop stays in the keyboard. No mouse, no context switches.

In real life

Section titled “In real life”
  • Monday morning: open mxr, hit Ctrl-p → Reply Queue to see what you bookmarked over the weekend; walk it with j/k and r.
  • Inbox bombing after vacation: mxr screener queue --format ids | xargs -n1 mxr cat | less — skim every unknown sender at once, decide dispositions in one pass.
  • Tax season: mxr screener feed billing@*.example.com --label "Receipts" and the disposition mirrors to Gmail so your accountant’s mobile app sees the categorisation too.
  • Newsletter overload: mxr subscriptions --rank --format json | jq '.[:10]' shows the worst ROI lists; pipe to xargs -n1 mxr unsubscribe.

Agent prompts that work

Section titled “Agent prompts that work”
"Show me the senders waiting in my screener queue. For each, summarise
the latest message in one sentence. I'll tell you the disposition; you
run `mxr screener allow|deny|feed|paper-trail`."
"It's Friday at 3pm. Snooze every newsletter in the inbox until Monday
morning. Use `mxr search 'label:newsletters is:unread' --format ids |
mxr snooze --until 'monday 9am' --yes`. Show the dry-run first."
"Walk my reply-later queue. For each one, show me the thread context,
suggest a 2-line reply, and wait for me to approve. Use `mxr replies
--format ids` to start."

See also

Section titled “See also”