As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create tasks from your emails.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 15 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your work email and collect the messages that contain requests, commitments or follow-up actions; remove newsletters and unrelated personal content.
   2. Paste the selected email text, including the subject, sender, date and relevant message thread, into the prompt without including passwords, payment details or unnecessary personal data.
   3. Ask the chatbot to produce the task list and the "Needs my decision" section using the supplied prompt.
   4. Open each source email beside the drafted task list and compare the task title, action, owner and due date against the evidence quote.
   5. Resolve every item marked "Not stated" or ambiguous by checking with the sender or the responsible colleague before assigning it.
   6. Create the confirmed tasks in your approved task system, copying the source email subject into the task for traceability and assigning only confirmed owners and dates.

   Prompt

   Turn the emails below into a task list for my work task system. Extract only actions that someone is being asked or clearly expected to complete. For each task, provide:
   - Task title
   - Specific action required
   - Owner, only if the email names or clearly identifies one
   - Due date, only if the email states one or it can be calculated unambiguously from a stated date; otherwise write "Not stated"
   - Priority, only as High, Medium or Low, based on explicit urgency in the email; otherwise write "Not stated"
   - Source email subject
   - Short evidence quote from the email
   - Ambiguities or missing information
   
   Do not invent owners, deadlines, priorities, project names or actions. Do not treat informational emails, advertisements, newsletters or completed actions as tasks. Keep separate tasks separate unless the email clearly makes them one deliverable. Flag any task that needs a human decision before it is created. Do not send messages, change records or create tasks in an external system. End with a section called "Needs my decision" listing anything I must confirm.
   
   Emails:
   [PASTE EMAILS HERE]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.