A founder's inbox is not a to-do list. It is a to-do list mixed with newsletters, receipts, tool notifications, calendar noise, and the occasional message that decides whether a quarter goes well. Reading it in order means reading all of it. Most people check it forty times a day because they cannot tell from the outside which check will contain the message that matters.
Waveloom reads Gmail in the background so you do not have to check. We wrote about the problem in Stop answering emails all day. This page is about what the system actually does.
Three kinds of email
When Waveloom reads a message, it is deciding which of three buckets it belongs in, or whether it belongs in none.
Decisions. Someone is asking you to choose. Sign this, approve that, pick a date, say yes or no to the partnership. These are the highest priority and they are pinned to the top of the feed as needs-you cards.
Replies. Someone is waiting on words from you. A customer, an investor, a candidate, a partner. The message is not hard, it just needs to happen, and it has been sitting for a day because it landed between two notifications.
Information. Things you should know but do not need to act on. A contract countersigned. A customer mentioning they are hiring. A deadline moved. These become observation cards. No draft, no action, just the fact and why it matters.
What gets dropped
Most of it. Newsletters, receipts, automated notifications, CCs on threads that are moving fine without you, replies that only say thanks. Waveloom does not create a card for these and does not queue them for later. If it is not confident a message needs you, the answer is nothing.
There are also caps. Messages are processed in small batches, with a hard cap on how many cards a batch can create and how many notifications go out per day. A topic that already has a card doesn't get a second one; new events on it join the existing card's thread. Quiet hours, during which nothing is pushed to you. The feed shows how many messages were reviewed and how many were surfaced, so you can see the ratio.
The card
When a message clears the bar, you get one card. Three things on it.
- The message, with context. The email itself, plus the compact context Waveloom keeps: what you have told it, what it has learned from your approvals and dismissals, and what is already in the feed.
- Why this matters. One line, specific to you. "Investor from the March call, asking for the updated deck, deadline is Friday." Not a summary. A reason to open it.
- A draft. If the message needs a reply, the draft is already written, from the message and that context. It is a starting point, and it is editable.
Approval
Nothing is sent without you. You read the draft, change what you want, and approve. Or you dismiss the card. Either way, Waveloom remembers. Approvals and dismissals both feed back into what makes a card next time.
Reply by email is one of the two background actions Waveloom can execute. The gate is in the code, not in a prompt or a setting. There is no mode where it sends on its own.