Policy recipes

Three of these four policies are templates in the console: click Use a template and pick one by name. The fourth you paste in and click Review. Anything a policy doesn't allow is blocked, unlabelled mail included, which is why each recipe ends with a Deny line.

Work Assistant

When: you want help with work mail and the agent should never send. The Quickstart uses it.

Allow reading and searching emails labeled work or events.
Allow marking emails labeled work as read or unread.
Allow creating drafts.
Deny all access to emails labeled family, friends, banking, investments, taxes, medical, insurance, legal, or auth.

Allows reading and searching clam/work and clam/events, marking work mail read or unread, and drafts; blocks sending, replying, forwarding, archiving, deleting, and the nine labels on the Deny line.

Try: "Summarize the work email I got this week."

Inbox Janitor

When: the inbox fills with mail you never open and you want it cleared without losing anything.

Allow reading and searching emails labeled promotions, social, or newsletter.
Allow archiving and marking as read emails labeled promotions, social, or newsletter.
Never allow deleting any email.
Deny all access to emails labeled banking, investments, taxes, medical, insurance, legal, or auth.

Allows reading, archiving and marking as read clam/promotions, clam/social and clam/newsletter; blocks deleting on every email, sending, and every other label, work included.

Try: "Archive every promotion older than two weeks and tell me how many you cleared."

Expense Tracker

When: you want answers about what you buy and pay for, with nothing changed in Gmail except a draft.

Allow reading and searching emails labeled receipts, utilities, or subscriptions.
Allow creating drafts.
Deny all access to emails labeled banking, investments, taxes, medical, insurance, legal, or auth.

Allows reading and searching clam/receipts, clam/utilities and clam/subscriptions, and drafts; blocks sending, archiving and deleting on every email, and every other label.

Try: "List the subscriptions that renewed this month, with the amount for each."

Reply to work email, but ask me before sending

When: the agent should answer colleagues, and you approve each reply first. No template has an approval rule, so paste this one in.

Allow reading and searching emails labeled work.
Allow creating drafts.
Ask me before replying to emails labeled work.
Deny all access to emails labeled family, friends, banking, investments, taxes, medical, insurance, legal, or auth.

Allows reading, searching and drafts on clam/work, and a reply once you approve it, which then sends exactly once; blocks new emails, forwards, archiving, deleting, and the labels on the Deny line. Approvals says how the request reaches you.

Try: "Reply to the latest message from my manager and confirm I'll be at Thursday's meeting."

Make it yours

Swap the labels (listed on How rules work), add a sender ("from anyone at example.com") or a date ("received in the last 30 days"), and keep the Deny line. When a rule asks for something Clam can't express, Review says so and the rest still applies. Next: Writing effective policies.