My inbox has been clean for months, and I barely lift a finger

Twice a day I actually look at my mail. Nine in the morning and three in the afternoon. The rest of the day my inbox sits there clean, and it has for months. Not because I clear every message right away, but because an assistant catches most of it for me. That assistant is called Cora.

Cora is an AI inbox assistant from the American company Every. It runs on top of Gmail, so I don't have to switch to a new app. What's time-sensitive reaches me straight away, the rest is filed automatically. Twice a day I get a short Brief: this is what you should read, but don't need to reply to. Those two Briefs, at nine and at three, have become my new mail moments.

What's really different: I no longer chase my inbox. It used to be full, and things kept piling up. Now I read the Brief, handle what needs handling, and I'm done. Do I still open Gmail? Sometimes, when a notification comes in on my phone and I'm curious. But I don't have to anymore. That shift, from having to to getting to, is the whole point.

The smartest part is the drafts. For mail that needs a reply, Cora prepares a draft in my own writing style, in the drafts folder. I read it, change what I want, and send. The AI doesn't send anything out behind my back. I keep the button.

Honestly: at the start it took time. Which sender belongs in which folder, which mail can and can't wait, that wasn't set once and done. I adjusted it about ten times, sometimes in conversation with Cora itself: this went wrong, do it this way from now on. So count on a setup period. After that it works.

A fair question about a tool that reads along in your mail: what happens to those messages? Every says it doesn't use customer mail to train its models, and the Gmail connection is verified by Google. For me that was enough to get started.

Why I'm writing this down: for me Cora is a good example of how an AI assistant should feel. Not a chatbot you go to, but something that works in the background, in your style, while you keep control. No fanfare, no "look what AI can do". Just a chore you had every day that has grown quieter.