Most email automation relies on polling, checking your inbox every few minutes to see if something new arrived. This approach wastes resources and introduces delays that make your AI assistant feel sluggish. When an important email lands, you want your AI agent to know immediately, not five minutes later when the scheduled check happens. Through building real-time notification systems with Clawdbot, I’ve discovered that Google Pub/Sub transforms email automation from a periodic check into an instant response system.

The conventional approach of polling email servers creates a fundamental tension. Poll too frequently and you waste API calls. Poll too infrequently and important messages sit unread while your automation sleeps. Google’s Pub/Sub infrastructure eliminates this tradeoff entirely by pushing notifications to your system the moment new email arrives. For context on building AI agents that respond to external triggers, see my guide on AI agent tool integration.

How the Gmail to Clawdbot Pipeline Works

The architecture connects several components into a seamless flow. Gmail monitors your inbox and publishes change events to Google Pub/Sub whenever new messages arrive. Pub/Sub then pushes these notifications to a webhook endpoint. The gog serve component receives these pushes and transforms them into Clawdbot hook invocations. Finally, Clawdbot processes the email with your configured AI model and delivers the result to your preferred chat channel.

This push-based architecture means your AI assistant responds to emails in seconds rather than minutes. The difference feels dramatic in practice. Important client emails, urgent support requests, or time-sensitive opportunities get immediate attention instead of languishing until the next polling cycle.

Gmail Watch API: Google’s Watch API allows applications to subscribe to inbox changes. When you set up a watch, Gmail will notify your Pub/Sub topic whenever relevant changes occur. These watches expire after seven days, so your automation needs to refresh them periodically.

Google Pub/Sub: This messaging service acts as the reliable intermediary. Gmail publishes events, and Pub/Sub guarantees delivery to your webhook. Even if your server temporarily goes offline, Pub/Sub will retry delivery when it comes back.

gog serve: The gog command line tool from gogcli provides a local server that receives Pub/Sub push notifications. It handles the webhook mechanics and transforms incoming events into Clawdbot hook calls with the gmail preset.

Clawdbot Hooks: The hook system receives the processed notification and triggers your configured actions. You define what happens, from simple notification forwarding to complex AI-powered email processing and response drafting.

Prerequisites for Setting Up the Integration

Before implementing this pipeline, you need several components in place. Each serves a specific purpose in the chain from Gmail to your chat application.

gcloud CLI: Google’s command line tools let you configure Pub/Sub topics, subscriptions, and service accounts. You’ll create a topic for Gmail notifications and a push subscription that points to your webhook endpoint. The authentication setup requires a service account with appropriate permissions.

gog (gogcli): This tool provides the local webhook server and Gmail integration utilities. It handles the complexity of processing Pub/Sub push messages and mapping them to Clawdbot hook calls. The gmail preset understands Gmail’s notification format and extracts relevant email metadata.

Tailscale Funnel: Your webhook endpoint needs a public URL that Google can reach. Tailscale Funnel exposes your local gog serve instance to the internet through a secure tunnel. This eliminates the need for complex firewall configuration or dedicated server infrastructure. For more on building production-ready AI systems that handle external inputs, explore my AI notification systems guide.

Clawdbot Installation: Your Clawdbot instance needs the hook system configured to receive incoming calls. The webhook endpoint will invoke hooks with email data, and Clawdbot routes these to your specified processing logic.

Configuring the Hook with Gmail Preset Mapping

Clawdbot’s hook configuration defines how incoming email notifications get processed. The gmail preset provides a structured mapping that extracts useful fields from Gmail’s notification payload.

The configuration specifies your webhook endpoint, the gmail preset for parsing, and the target channel where processed results should be delivered. You can define multiple hooks for different processing scenarios, perhaps one for urgent emails that goes to a priority channel and another for routine messages that accumulate in a daily digest.

Preset Mapping: The gmail preset understands Gmail’s API response format and extracts standard fields: sender address, subject line, snippet preview, full body content, timestamps, and labels. This structured data becomes available to your message templates and AI processing logic.

Channel Routing: Each hook can target a different chat channel. Route work emails to your professional workspace, personal messages to a private channel, and filtered notifications to a low-priority digest. This routing happens automatically based on rules you define.

Priority Classification: You can configure different hooks to handle emails differently based on sender, subject patterns, or labels. High-priority senders might trigger immediate notification, while newsletters get batched for later review. Understanding how to build effective automation is covered in my guide on AI automation for startups.

Customizing Message Templates

The message template system determines what information Clawdbot delivers when an email arrives. You have full control over formatting and content selection.

From Field: Display the sender’s name and email address so you immediately know who contacted you. Template variables let you format this however works best for your workflow.

Subject Line: The email subject appears prominently in your notification. For many messages, this single line tells you whether immediate attention is needed.

Snippet Preview: Gmail provides a short preview of the email content. This snippet often contains enough context to triage without reading the full message.

Full Body: For emails that need complete review, you can include the full message body. Clawdbot handles formatting to ensure readability in your chat interface.

The template system supports conditional logic. Show the full body only for emails from specific senders, or include attachments information only when present. This keeps notifications clean while preserving access to complete information when needed.

Model Override for Email Processing

The most powerful aspect of this integration is AI-powered email processing. Instead of simply forwarding notifications, Clawdbot can analyze, summarize, and even draft responses.

Custom Model Selection: Different emails benefit from different processing. Quick notifications might use a fast, inexpensive model. Complex business correspondence might warrant a more capable model for accurate summarization. The hook configuration allows per-rule model overrides.

Summarization: Long email threads become actionable with AI summarization. Extract key decisions, action items, and deadlines without reading pages of back-and-forth.

Response Drafting: For routine inquiries, Clawdbot can draft appropriate responses. You review and send rather than composing from scratch. This accelerates response time for common request types.

Classification and Routing: AI models can classify incoming email by urgency, topic, or required action. This classification feeds into routing rules, ensuring important messages get immediate attention while routine communication follows standard processing. For deeper context on building AI agents that handle real-world tasks, see my practical guide for AI agent development.

Making Real-Time Automation Work

The combination of Gmail’s Watch API, Google Pub/Sub, gog serve, and Clawdbot creates email automation that feels genuinely intelligent. Messages arrive instantly. Processing happens in seconds. Results appear in your preferred chat interface ready for action.

This architecture scales from personal inbox management to team email workflows. The same components handle one mailbox or dozens. Push-based delivery means you only pay for actual email volume rather than continuous polling overhead.

Real-time email automation represents a shift in how AI assistants interact with your digital life. Instead of scheduled batch processing, you get immediate, contextual responses. The AI assistant becomes a genuine extension of your attention, surfacing what matters when it matters. For foundational understanding of building agentic systems with proper protocols, explore my MCP developer guide.

Sources

Google Cloud Pub/Sub Documentation. cloud.google.com/pubsub/docs

Gmail API Watch Reference. developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides/push

Tailscale Funnel Documentation. tailscale.com/kb/1223/funnel

gogcli GitHub Repository. github.com/anthropics/gog