Design 6: Email agent

Overview

A mailbox-aware assistant for triage, search, summaries, and reviewed outgoing messages. Sending is a controlled tool.

Why this matters

Repeated correspondence consumes staff time.

An everyday example

An assistant drafts replies for signature.

A technical example

Associate an incoming invoice email with an authorized claim and draft acknowledgement.

How it works

1. Verify mailbox scope
2. Parse
3. Retrieve case context
4. Draft
5. Validate recipients/attachments
6. Approve/send.

Architecture and flow

Mailbox event → scoped worker/agent → draft → review → sender → receipt.

The insurance assistant example

Request missing documents from the correct customer.

When to use it

Controlled triage/drafting with clear mailbox permissions.

When to avoid it

Unrestricted autonomous forwarding creates data-leak risk.

Interview answer

“I treat incoming email as untrusted and separate draft generation from approved, deduplicated sending.”

Benefits, trade-offs, and production considerations

Persist provider message IDs, thread IDs, draft hash, send key, and outcome. Reconcile ambiguous send results and prevent reply loops.