Open Skyflo in the morning and your inbox has already been worked through. The threads that need you sit on Home, each with its next step ready: a reply drafted, an invite to answer, a mission to start. Threads you already answered have settled on their own, and newsletters you never write back to never made it onto the list. Inside the parts of the company you handed over, some of the work may already be under way.
That is the Gmail and Calendar loop in Skyflo 1.8.0, the release that made Skyflo your AI chief of staff. A chief of staff does not forward you your mail. They read it, decide what each message asks of you, and bring it back with the next move prepared. This post is about how Skyflo does that, and where it stops.
What reaches Home, and what does not
Skyflo reads mail that reaches your inbox. Promotions, Social and Forums, spam and trash never reach triage. Newsletters and other bulk mail are skipped when they come from a sender you have never written to, and kept when they come from someone you correspond with. That check uses your own sent history, not a guess from the wording.
Whether a thread is still open is a fact read from Gmail, never inferred by a model: who wrote last, and whether the thread is still in your inbox. A thread you answered or archived resolves on its own, without a model reading it at all. Drafts you have not sent are ignored, because a draft is not something anybody sent.
Calendar invitations and changes arrive the same way. Everything lands on Home sorted by who moves next. What waits on you is in Needs you. A thread you replied to moves to Waiting on, because the next move is the other person's. An invite you answered moves to Handled.
One next step per item
Each mail or calendar item that needs you carries one prepared step, named on its row.
Reply ready. Triage first decides, from the message's headers and a short snippet, whether a reply is needed at all. Only then does Skyflo read the message in full and draft one. You will not find a stack of polite drafts for mail that never asked a question. The draft shows the recipients and subject, and you can edit it directly or ask Skyflo to change it ("shorter and warmer"). When your request carries a lasting preference, Skyflo keeps it in Memory as reply guidance, where you can read it, edit it or remove it, and the next draft starts from it. Nothing goes out until you choose Send reply.
Invite to answer. Skyflo recommends a response and offers Accept, Maybe and Decline. Your answer is sent to Google Calendar and the item moves to Handled.
Mission ready. Some mail is really work: a contract to review, numbers to pull, a document to prepare. Skyflo drafts the mission's title and instructions from the thread. You can edit both, then Start mission. It runs in that item's area with your usual approvals, or in your General folder when the item belongs to no area. The item then waits on the mission instead of asking you again.
For you to do. When the next step is something only you can do, the item says what it is in a line.
Every item also links straight to the thread with Open in Gmail, or to the event with Open in Calendar, so the original is one click away.
When Skyflo starts the work itself
An area is a part of the company you hand to Skyflo: hiring, finance, customers, a launch. Each area is a folder on your Mac with a playbook agents read and keep current, and a locked block of limits no agent can edit: its level, its folders, its daily mission limit and the rules you write. The app's own example of a rule is "Never email customers without my review."
When a message belongs to an area, Skyflo does not have to wait for you to press Start. Within that area's limits it starts the mission itself and reports afterwards. The level decides how far the mission goes:
- Prepares ("Drafts and asks first") prepares the work completely and stops before anything that sends, pays or posts, using the approval you already know.
- Acts ("Acts, then tells you") finishes the work inside the area's folders and limits.
Either way the mission appears in Running while it works, and the brief tells you what was done. Once an area reaches its daily mission limit, Skyflo starts nothing more there that day and says so on the item. If a mission Skyflo started cannot finish, or is interrupted because your Mac slept or Skyflo quit, the item returns to you instead of being filed as done. Work Skyflo took off your list is yours again the moment it cannot carry it.
Outside every area, Skyflo starts no work on its own. That boundary is deliberate: it acts only where you have said it may.
The morning and evening brief
Twice a day Skyflo writes you a brief on Home. It leads with what Skyflo did: Done lists work it finished, and Updates passes on news it saw without presenting it as something it did. Then come the decisions that are yours under Needs you, the work Under way, and any movement on your goals.
The times are yours. Open Brief times from the Home menu to set the morning and evening brief, or let Skyflo adjust mornings to when you are usually at your Mac. Something urgent does not wait for the next brief. Quiet hours hold urgent notes until they end.
What stays in your hands
Connecting Google lets Skyflo read your mail and calendar, and send the replies and RSVPs you approve. To sort your mail and calendar and draft replies, message and event content goes to OpenAI through Skyflo; Skyflo does not store it or use it to train models. You can disconnect an account at any time in Settings › Connected accounts, and a disconnected account stops syncing at once.
The pattern is the one Skyflo follows everywhere. It prepares the work and reports what it did. A reply sent from Home or an invite answered is a step you take, and missions start on their own only inside the areas and limits you set.
How to try it
- Download Skyflo for Mac, or update to 1.8.0 from the app.
- On Home, choose Connect Google, or open Settings › Connected accounts. Finish connecting in your browser.
- After the first sync, open an item marked Reply ready. Edit the draft or ask for a rewrite, then send it and watch the thread move to Waiting on.
- Add an area for one part of your work, such as customers. Write one rule in its locked block and leave it at Prepares.
- Set your brief times from the Home menu, and read tomorrow's morning brief before you open Gmail.
The 1.8.0 release notes list everything that shipped with this loop, and Your AI chief of staff describes the whole role. Download Skyflo for Mac and let your inbox arrive with its next steps.