Drag your inbox into shape.
A board of cards that becomes your Gmail labels and filters. Runs in your own Google account.
Gmail filters are powerful and miserable to write. Labelboard reads your inbox, groups it into cards (a client, a tool, a newsletter, a deal), and lets you sort those cards into columns by dragging them. Each column is a label. When the board looks right, one click writes the labels and filters to Gmail and sorts the mail already sitting in your inbox.
- See it before it happens. The top of the board shows your inbox now and after you apply: 1,200 in your inbox, 716 stay. Every drag updates it. Every card and column says whether Gmail already has it sorted or what Apply still changes.
- Sort by what mail is about, not who sent it. A lawyer's email about a client lands with that client, not under "Lawyers".
- Plain-word review. Before anything touches Gmail, you read what will change and what won't.
- Your filters stay yours. The filters you already have show next to the board. Labelboard never edits or deletes one unless you hand it over.
Screenshots show a made-up mailbox (npm run demo): every name and address in them is invented.
Labelboard opens on Home, and next to the board are three views of the same decisions:
| View | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Home | What now? The next step, big (sort the new senders, apply, answer what waits on you), the rest of what waits beside it, what came in since you last looked, and a door to each view. Settings → Look picks how it looks (What now, Gallery or Labels) and whether Labelboard opens on it. |
| Gmail | What does Gmail do with my mail? Filters on the left (each column's, yours), labels on the right in Gmail's colours, your threads flowing between them: labelled already, labelled once you apply, or leaving the inbox. Set when a column's mail leaves the inbox (right away, after a few days, once read), merge a label of yours into any other (from its menu or by dragging it), clear labels left over from an earlier layout, fix colours that look alike. Under it, each filter day by day. |
| Inbox | Who fills your inbox? Bubbles per sender or company, grouped by column, who writes the most, and every inbox thread as one square, by column or by age. |
| Priorities | What waits on you? Threads from people where the last message is theirs, most pressing first (hide one until it gets a new message, or leave out colleagues-only threads), how long they've waited, the time to clear them at your pace, and the automated mail still cluttering the inbox. Below, your replies over the last 30 days: how many threads you answered, how fast, per column, and what you archived without answering. |
| Gmail | Inbox |
|---|---|
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| Priorities | Your replies, last 30 days |
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- It runs as your own Apps Script. No server, no Google Cloud project, no third party. The code runs inside your Google account and only you can open it.
- Metadata only. It reads who wrote, who was copied, the subject, the labels, the dates, Gmail's short snippet and whether there is an attachment. It never opens message bodies. It reads your inbox plus the last 30 days of archived and sent mail, so mail your filters keep out of the inbox shows on the board too (off in one click in Priorities).
- Nothing happens without Apply, unless you switch it on. Reading, dragging and every view are read-only. Apply creates labels and filters and sorts inbox threads. It never sends mail, and deletes only what you set a card to delete, plus labels: its own once nothing uses them, and one of yours only after you merge or hand it over. While you're away, one hourly check runs only if you asked for it: it archives mail a column or card set to leave the inbox later, and, if you switched them on in Settings → Runs on its own, reads what changed every 6 hours and applies what the rules placed (never while something of yours waits for Review; each run is an Apply you can undo).
- Open source. Every line that touches your mail is in this repo.
You need a Gmail account and Node.js, about 20 minutes, most of it the first read of your inbox.
npm install -g @google/clasp && clasp login
npm run build && cd dist
clasp create --type webapp --title Labelboard --rootDir . && clasp push && clasp deploy -d "first version"Then open the web app address, pick a preset and read your inbox. The full guide covers every Google screen on the way (the Apps Script API switch, the "unverified app" warning, several signed-in accounts) and how to update or remove it.
- Read the inbox, and the last 30 days of mail that left it, into a snapshot (sender, recipients, subject, labels). Later reads only fetch threads that changed.
- Cards. Each thread is claimed by one card, a rule you can drag. What a thread is about wins over who is on it: a client or project named in the subject or taking part (a topic), then a topic in a process with a signal word, subject patterns, group addresses, counterparties, and only then the accountant, agency or lawyer copied on it. Last, the sender's domain or address.
- Suggestions. Each card starts in a column picked from your existing labels, a contacts file, an optional AI read, or newsletter and notification patterns. Unclear ones wait in Unsorted.
- Board. Drag cards between columns (or focus one and press Shift + ← →). Each column has a label color and a Leaves the inbox menu: never, right away, after a few days, or once read.
- Review and apply. Labels are created or recolored (a column's label its colour, sub-labels and folders a lighter shade), filters are compared with the ones Labelboard owns, then the threads already in your inbox get their labels (one batch call per label). Labels Labelboard created come off inbox threads whose card moved. Last, labels move: one Labelboard made for an earlier layout hands its mail to where the card is now, and a label of yours you chose to merge into another hands over its mail, inbox and archived; then the old label is deleted. Labels you made are never touched until you merge or hand one over on the Gmail tab, and Undo puts it back.
Gmail runs every matching filter, and the board does the same: a thread gets every label whose rule matches, and leaves the inbox if any of them skips the inbox.
They show in their own lane with what they match in your inbox and where they overlap the board. Adopt one to hand it to Labelboard (then you can change or remove it on the board); Hand it back returns it untouched. A filter Labelboard made that you later edit or delete in Gmail is flagged, not quietly written again.
The first run asks for a preset: basic (Clients, Calendar, Tools, Newsletters) or investor
(portfolio, dealflow, M&A with sale processes, other deals, funds, data rooms). Switch any time under
Settings → Import and export: your identity, topics and the cards you placed are kept. Everything is
editable in Settings: columns, your addresses and group addresses, subject rules, topics, processes.
Column flags: topics (contacts filed here are what mail is about), newTopics (the AI read may add
topics here), automated (machine mail). config.processes lists processes like a sale:
{ bucket, title, folder?, words[], from[] }; with a folder, each topic's label goes inside it
(_M&A/Deals/Acme). A contact filed under a sub-label of its own (_M&A/Advisors) goes there when no
topic is named.
A JSON list that teaches the board who is who, imported with Import a file… in Settings → Import and export. The same item takes an AI read and a settings file, so a setup tuned in the local preview moves over in one step.
[{ "match": "domain", "value": "acme.com", "bucket": "clients", "name": "Acme", "sublabel": "Acme" },
{ "match": "email", "value": "ceo@gmail.com", "bucket": "clients", "name": "Acme" },
{ "match": "process", "value": "Acme", "bucket": "legal", "name": "Acme" }]A contact's role comes from its column (topics or not); "role": "counterparty" marks a party whose
mail is about one thing even when no topic is named (a buyer, a recruiter). Domains shared by unrelated
senders (gmail.com…) never count as a company, and automated senders never count as a person.
Labelboard itself never sends your mail anywhere. Two ways to bring an AI in, both ending in a file you import, so nothing changes until you look at it on the board:
- Any AI. Settings → Ask an AI → Download the brief makes one file: the cards you haven't placed, with up to 3 senders, 3 subjects and the first line of the newest email each, and your columns. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or any AI you trust, then paste its answer back in the same place.
- Claude with your Gmail. Copy
skills/labelboardto~/.claude/skills/and connect Gmail in Claude. Claude places cards from the brief, opening threads where a card is unclear, and can read every thread (many small Haiku readers, one Sonnet to reconcile) for the AI read below. It never changes Gmail itself.
Either way, what goes into the brief or the read (senders, subjects, snippets) reaches that AI.
Under the hood, rules only see addresses and subjects. An AI read of each thread (subject + snippet) lands in the
settings as threadVotes: { "<threadId>": { "b": bucket, "t": topic|null, "c": "high"|"medium"|"low", "w": why } }.
A voted topic then claims the thread first, machine mail drops counterparty claims, and votes become
card suggestions. For mail already in the inbox, a high vote that disagrees with its card moves that
one email; the card drawer shows each move and lets you undo it or move any email yourself. Future mail
always follows the cards' rules.
A review goes further and places cards: { "labelboard": "claude-review", "cards": { "<card key>": { "bucket", "why" } } },
imported like any file. Those cards carry a Claude pill until you keep or move them, and a card you
placed is never overwritten. node dev/review.mjs list prints the cards to review from a local snapshot.
Settings can ship with a deploy: node dev/build.mjs --bake settings.json, then clasp push. The script
takes a baked file once and keeps the cards you placed.
npm test # rule engine, sync and views (Node, no dependencies)
node dev/serve.mjs ~/.labelboard 8765 # the board on a local snapshot, Gmail untouched
node dev/ingest-mcp.mjs <pages> <labels.json> <out.json> <you@domain> # snapshot from Gmail MCP pages
node dev/ai-read.mjs prep|merge [dataDir] # the AI read in parts, then one file to import (skills/labelboard)src/rules.js is the only place rules live; the board, the tests and the server all load it.
src/insights.js computes the views. No bundler and no npm dependencies: dev/build.mjs inlines
everything into the one HTML page Apps Script serves. Design notes: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md,
docs/DESIGN.md.
MIT. Gmail is a trademark of Google LLC. Labelboard is not made or endorsed by Google.