---
title: "Step-by-step plan, your first mail agent in six steps"
description: "Six steps with ready-to-use prompts to build an agent that goes through your emails every morning and tells you what needs your attention today. Ready in half an hour."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/toolkit-stappenplan-mailagent
---

# Step-by-step plan, your first mail agent in six steps

An agent that goes through your emails every morning is, in my opinion, the best first agent you can build. It is small. And you will use it the very next day. This step-by-step plan takes you from an empty chat to an agent you have tested yourself. I wrote it for Copilot, but the prompts also work in Claude or ChatGPT. Count on half an hour.

## The first step, in a normal chat

I actually ignore the agent builder. I just start in a chat. And then I let my AI ask questions first. The vague parts in your assignment are exactly what it needs to figure out. Fill in the part between brackets.

**Prompt 1, the conversation beforehand**

```

I want an agent that goes through my emails from the past day every morning and tells me what needs my attention. I am [often on the road, in meetings all day] and usually only read my emails [when]. Do not perform that task yet. Ask me questions first, one at a time, until you understand what is important to me, what I call an action, what you can ignore and how I want to get the overview. Then summarise what you have understood and ask if it is correct.

```

Answer its questions just as you would explain it to a new colleague. Below you will find the five other steps as a Member. You get the prompt for the instruction and the settings in the agent builder. And then three test questions and a prompt to adjust.