the short version
your underway inbox now decides what it keeps. an email forwarded to your address becomes a line in the day's context only if it is about the work and adds something your connections do not already know. the rest is set aside, listed on the card with the reason, and never used.
- github notifications are set aside when github is connected, because the connection already logs your commits and pull requests
- build and ci notices, a run failed or a run cancelled, are set aside always
- the same thread forwarded twice in a day is one line, not six
- newsletters, promotions, receipts, routine billing and usage notices, login notices and anything with no bearing on the work are set aside too
- when it is unsure, it keeps the email
why it changed
a forwarding inbox is meant for the email that matters: the investor's reply, the supplier's quote, the customer who wrote back. one email a day is plenty. but the easy way to set it up is a gmail rule, and a gmail rule forwards whatever matches it.
ours matched too much. in one day fifty emails landed. more than half were github telling us about pull requests github had already told underway about through the connection. a handful were the same ads manager thread forwarded six times in the same minute. a few were usage summaries and credit notices. somewhere in there were three emails that actually mattered: a reply from a person about a video, a reply to a pitch, and a launch listing almost ready.
all fifty went into the tray. the director had to read past forty-seven lines of noise to find the three, and so did anyone opening the sent to you tab. a context that is mostly noise is worse than a short one, because the questions are only as good as what they are written from.
how it decides
two steps, in order.
first, plain rules, which cost nothing and never guess. if the email is from github, or its subject is a github repository's, and github is connected, it is set aside. if it is a build or ci notice, it is set aside whether github is connected or not. if a thread with the same subject was already kept in the last day, it is set aside. a forward arrives from you, so the rules look inside it for who wrote it first.
second, for everything else, the same read that writes the one line now also says whether the email belongs. it keeps an email when a person wrote it about the business, a customer, a partner, an investor, a hire, a journalist, or when it is a reply to your outreach, a decision, a deal, a deadline, a complaint, or a notice of something that really happened, a payment, a signup, a milestone, an outage. it sets aside newsletters, marketing, receipts, routine notices and anything with nothing to do with the work. when it is not sure, it keeps it. and if the read cannot run at all, the email is kept, as it always was.
nothing is hidden
set aside is not deleted. under received on the inbox card there is now set aside this week, with a count. open it and every set-aside email is listed with when it landed, its subject and the reason, in a few words. open shows the email itself, read from the mail service at that moment, the same as for a kept one. keep it puts it in the day as one line, and from then on it is context like any other forwarded email.
nothing set aside reaches the tray, the questions, the storyboard, ask the vault or the nudges. it exists only on that list, for a week, so you can check the filter is doing what you would have done.
the best rule is still a narrow one
the filter is a safety net, not a reason to forward everything. a gmail rule that forwards people, replies and real events, and leaves out the tools you have already connected, gives the director a cleaner day than any filter can. a good place to start: forward mail from people, not from no-reply addresses; leave out github, vercel, your hosting and your billing; forward replies to threads you started.
if you would rather not maintain a rule at all, forward the one email a day that matters by hand. it takes two seconds from any mail app, and the line is in the tray within a minute.
on the phone
the phone counts what was forwarded today on the context screen, and that count is now only what was kept. the inbox itself, with received and set aside, is managed on the web; manage inbox in settings opens it there.
will underway drop an email that mattered?
it keeps anything it is unsure about, and every set-aside email is listed on the inbox card for a week with a keep it button, so one press brings it back.
why are my github emails set aside?
because github is connected, and the connection already logs your commits and pull requests. the email would say the same thing twice.
is a set-aside email stored?
only its subject, sender, time and the reason, for the list on the card. the email itself stays with the mail service, as a kept one does.
can i turn the filter off?
not as a switch. keep it on any set-aside email puts it in the day, and an email the filter cannot read is kept.
forward the one that matters, then film. see the inbox.