One newsletter digest instead of 20 unread newsletters
You signed up for newsletters you like, and now they pile up unread. This prompt has your todo.is agent collect every newsletter in your Gmail each week, pull out the few ideas and links worth your time, drop duplicates across senders, and send you a single digest you can read over coffee.
The prompt
- Every [DAY AND TIME], find all newsletters in my Gmail from the past 7 days (from [NEWSLETTER SENDERS OR LABEL]). Write me one newsletter digest. Group items by topic, not by sender. For each topic give the 2 to 4 most useful points in one line each, with the newsletter name and a link to the original article. If several newsletters cover the same story, merge them into one item. Mark anything about [MY TOPICS] with "For you" and put it first. Skip sponsored sections and ads. End with one "Worth reading in full" pick and why. Keep it under 400 words and send it to [WHERE TO SEND] as an email or message.
What to change
- [DAY AND TIME]: e.g. "Saturday at 9:00" or "weekday at 12:30" for a daily lunch digest.
- [NEWSLETTER SENDERS OR LABEL]: e.g. "the Gmail label Newsletters", or a list like "Morning Brew, Lenny's Newsletter, The Hustle".
- [MY TOPICS]: What you care about most, e.g. "product management, pricing and AI tools for small teams".
- [WHERE TO SEND]: Email, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack or Discord.
Example result
- Newsletter digest, week of 6 October
- 23 newsletters read. 4 stories appeared in more than one, so they are merged below.
- For you: pricing and product
- • Usage-based pricing keeps spreading to small SaaS tools; two writers argue a simple base fee plus usage is easier to sell (The Pricing Letter, Product Notes)
- • A step-by-step guide to running a 2-week pricing test without annoying current customers (Product Notes)
- • Why onboarding emails with one task each beat long "welcome" emails (Growth Weekly)
- AI tools
- • New open models make it cheaper to run summarization in-house; benchmarks still vary by task (Dev Digest)
- • Practical checklist for reviewing AI-written support replies before they go out (Support Ops)
- Startups and funding
- • Seed rounds are taking longer to close; founders share how they kept momentum (Founder Friday, Startup Mail)
- Marketing
- • Short customer stories outperform feature lists in B2B newsletters (Growth Weekly)
- • How one team cut their posting schedule in half and kept engagement (Creator Notes)
- Skipped
- • 9 sponsored sections and 3 job boards
- Worth reading in full
- "Running a pricing test in 14 days" (Product Notes). It has a ready-made email to existing customers and a simple sheet for tracking results, both easy to reuse.
How to do it with todo.is
- Connect your Google account so your agent can search your Gmail.
- Copy the prompt and list your newsletters, or put them all under one Gmail label and name that label.
- Paste it into todo.is on the Today screen. It runs on the day and time you set.
- Read the digest and click through only to what interests you. Ask for "shorter" or "daily" to change it.
Tips for a better result
- A Gmail filter that labels newsletters ("has the word unsubscribe") makes the digest more reliable than a long sender list.
- Grouping by topic is what saves time. Ten newsletters about the same news story should become one line.
- Ask your agent to also list newsletters you never open, then use it with an unsubscribe list to cut the noise.
- Want a lighter inbox too? Tell Gmail to skip the inbox for that label and read only the digest.
newsletter digest: FAQ
- What is a newsletter digest? A newsletter digest is a single summary of many newsletters, with the main points and links. You get the value of each issue without reading every email.
- Can AI summarize newsletters in Gmail? Yes. Your todo.is agent reads the newsletters in your connected Gmail, summarizes them by topic and links back to the original articles.
- Daily or weekly newsletter digest: which is better? Weekly works for most people and costs fewer AI credits. Daily is useful if you follow fast-moving news, like markets or industry updates.
- Will it unsubscribe me from newsletters? Not by itself. It can list newsletters you never read, and you decide which ones to leave.
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