Why I built Delegate: The Email Assistant that protects your attention

This is a real screenshot from my desktop

The short answer?

To solve the low signal-to-noise ratio across multiple inboxes. Delegate reads every email so you don't have to. It’s Inbox 0 for the rest of us.

The long answer?

Let's dive into why email is so broken and how we can fix it.

A Brief History of My Inbox

Do you remember signing up for your first email address?

I do. It was the late 90s, and I was nine years old. A budding science fiction and fantasy nerd, I was deep into the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. Naturally, I wanted my email to reflect my love for the big, scaly beasts.

The internet was shiny and new, but Hotmail addresses were already hard to come by. I ended up with something like dragonfire257@hotmail.com—a digital home that served as my ticket to MSN Messenger (IFYKY) and marked the start of my lifelong love affair with the web.

That email address is long-gone now, lost to the sands of time through the process of growing up and requiring a more professional identity. But saying goodbye wasn’t easy, and not just for sentimental reasons. Your primary email address is more than a mailbox. It’s your identity, your keys, your calendar, your filing system, and your tether to the online world.

Why Email Feels Broken

Most of us don’t change our email addresses often. We accumulate more as life demands—school, work, hobbies—but rarely let them go. And because we need email to do almost anything online, we’re inundated with noise:

Mandatory Notifications:
Password resets, two-factor codes, receipts, security alerts, policy updates, and sales promotions.
Social Media Updates:
Attempts to drag us back into platforms with likes, follows, and friend requests.
Newsletters:
Ones we signed up for but stopped reading. Ones we didn’t sign up for but receive anyway.
Workplace Overload:
CC culture, endless webinar emails and cold outreach, and chains you didn’t ask to be part of.
Spam and Phishing:
Thanks to data leaks and the thriving cybercrime industry, our inboxes get more polluted over time.

Sound familiar?

Why I Hate Email

Here’s the core of it:

There’s almost never anything useful in my inbox.
BUT - There’s occasionally something very urgent and important.
No email client has ever been able to reliably distinguish between the two.

Email notifications are an all-or-nothing affair:

If I turn them off, I miss the urgent ones.
If I turn them on, I get bombarded by meaningless distractions.

Filters help, but they’re rigid. They either throw out important messages or let through too much noise. Google’s categories are a step in the right direction, but they’ve never worked well enough for me to trust them fully. Countless are the times I've missed important emails because they're buried in the Updates tab.

The Vision for Delegate

I have friends who’ve solved this problem by hiring personal assistants. These human assistants monitor their inboxes, handle minor tasks, and notify them only when something truly needs their attention. That’s what I wanted—but without the salary.

So I built Delegate: an AI email assistant that manages my inbox like a human assistant would. It reads my email, and sends me a private message in Telegram when there’s something I need to deal with.

Here’s how it works:

Summarization and Categorization:
Delegate reads every email, summarizes it, determines its importance, and categorizes it according to my preferences.
Custom Instructions:
I can teach Delegate how to handle different types of emails, from newsletters to urgent work messages.
Urgent Items:
If an email is urgent enough to need immediate attention, Delegate sends me a message with the important details.
Personalized Briefings:
For everything else, I get a concise morning briefing that brings all of the important, less urgent information together in one spot.
Connect Every Email:
Delegate handles any email forwarded to it, which means that I’ve directed all emails across six email addresses plus countless aliases into it.

Delegate is my deeply personalized, ever-vigilant guardian of my inbox and my attention. It makes the right decisions at the right time, freeing me from the endless barrage of noise while ensuring I never miss what’s truly important. I’ve turned off notifications from all of my email clients for the first time in my life, able to trust Delegate to message me if something needs my attention.

For the first time in years, I feel in control of my email—and my focus.

How I’ve Customized my Delegate

One of the most powerful aspects of Delegate is how deeply customizable it is. By tailoring its instructions to my needs, Delegate feels less like a tool and more like a personal assistant who truly understands what matters to me. Here are a few ways I’ve set it up:

Prioritizing Security Alerts:
If there’s a login attempt from a location other than where I typically am, Delegate notifies me immediately. But for logins from my usual locations, it doesn’t bother me.
Important Contacts First:
Any emails from my lawyers are flagged and brought to my attention right away since there are some immigration and tax issues we're dealing with and I want to see those immediately.
Holiday Shopping Assistance:
Around Black Friday, Delegate highlights deals that might make great Christmas gifts for my family in my daily briefing. These won't disturb me through the day but I can scan them all at once in the morning if there's anything good. If this was catching too much, I could specify specific items or categories that each person is interested in for Delegate to look out for.
Reducing Noise from Subscriptions:
Routine updates from certain apps and services I use frequently are held back unless they’re critical or unusual.
Receipts and Payments:
I don't want to get these immediately, but I've told Delegate to list off any merchants and charges in my daily briefing so I can quickly review them in a few seconds in the morning and ensure there's nothing unexpected.

These examples barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. Delegate’s flexibility allows anyone to shape it to their unique preferences, ensuring the system feels like their assistant rather than a generic filter. You can also provide instructions to shape Delegate’s personality so you could ask it to talk like a pirate (I've tried it and it's amazing), or respond only in verse.

What Lies Ahead

The first version of Delegate is already a powerful tool for protecting your attention and managing the chaos of your inbox. For me, it’s a game-changing sidekick, ensuring I never miss what’s truly important without being overwhelmed by noise.

But email isn’t just about managing incoming messages. It’s also about communication, collaboration, and staying on top of life’s endless demands. Delegate has the potential to do so much more. As I continue to refine and upgrade it, here’s a glimpse of what the future holds:

Effortless Email Drafting:
Delegate will help you compose the perfect response for every situation, saving time while ensuring your message hits just the right tone.
Memory for Key Details:
Imagine Delegate remembering important dates, actions, and notes from your emails, helping you keep all your plates spinning, no matter how many you’ve got.
Calendar Management:
From accepting and rejecting meeting requests to scheduling events on your behalf, Delegate will make managing your calendar seamless and stress-free.
Coordinating Like a Pro:
Whether it’s following up on requests, gathering information, or handling back-and-forth logistics, Delegate will step up as a true personal assistant.
A Personalized Knowledge Base:
Over time, Delegate will develop a deeper understanding of your life, your connections, and your preferences, making its assistance even more tailored and effective.

This is just the beginning. Delegate’s potential to evolve into a true digital assistant is vast, and I’m excited to bring these capabilities to life in the future. Everyone deserves to have a dedicated and capable helper who allows them to spend time where they can make the most impact both personally and professionally.

Wrapping Up

Email doesn’t have to be a source of endless distraction, frustration, and missed opportunities. For years, I struggled with manually sorting through the noise to find what mattered most. Delegate has transformed how I interact with my inbox, allowing me to focus on what’s truly important—without the constant interruptions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. If Delegate sounds like the solution you’ve been looking for, give it a try or reach out to me with questions. I’m always happy to chat about how Delegate can work for you.

Delegate: Your AI Email assistant

Delegate makes your life better by reading your email so you don't have to.

Try it out now!

Let’s reclaim our inboxes and our attention.

—Dan