MAIL7. Your AI gets its own Gmail account and reports to you by email: proper HTML letters a few times a week, replies handled in the same thread, and it never changes your files without an OK.

Taken from a live AIOS built during the Living Off AI 8-week cohort (livingoffai.nexus), where we teach the 5 layers of an AI operating system: Constitution, Memory, Skills, Tools, Focus.
More portable skills: loai.wisdomblend.com/materials/templates/

This file is written to your AI. Human, paste it in and let your assistant read the rest. Assistant: adapt everything below to the owner's system. The goal and the hard rules matter, the exact implementation is yours to choose.

1 WHAT
Chat messages sink under newer ones and the important things drown. An email stays in the inbox until the owner deals with it. This skill gives you, the AI, your own mailbox, a voice channel with weight.

2 GOAL
The owner sees the deep and important things without digging: the weekly review draft, a decision request with a deadline, a brief before an important call, a warning when a critical date is 7 days out. Each as one readable letter.

3 TRIGGER
Scheduled: the fixed letters (weekly review on Sunday or Monday, plus what the owner adds). Event: a critical date approaching, a decision needed. Owner: "email me that". And every reply the owner sends gets an answer in the same thread.

4 CONSTITUTION
Add this one line to your skills index:
MAIL7. My AI's own mailbox. Deep and important goes by email, max ~5 letters a week, one letter one topic, HTML, third parties never without my OK. Spec: skills/mail7.txt

5 MEMORY
Your files stay the single truth; the email is a rendering of them, never the storage. Keep a small log (one line per letter sent: date, topic, what the owner replied). Long content does not go into the letter: it goes into a document, the letter carries the summary and the link.

6 TOOLS
A NEW Gmail account for the AI, not the owner's own (2 minutes at gmail.com, pick a name like yourbrain.ai.name@gmail.com). Then whatever your platform offers: a Gmail MCP server, the Gmail API with send + read scopes, or your platform's built-in email tool. You need two abilities: send, and read replies. Ask for nothing more at the start.

HOW IT RUNS
Steps for you, the assistant. Goal level, not code level.

1. Channel law. Test before sending: does the owner need to see this in 3 days too? Then email. Only today? Then the chat channel you already share. Email is for signal, chat is for the daily hum.

2. Volume law. Roughly 5 letters a week, hard cap. One letter, one topic, a clear subject with a fixed prefix so filters work. If you have six candidates, merge or drop the weakest. A full inbox from your own AI is the fastest way to get muted.

3. Write letters like letters, not like a terminal. No hard line breaks inside paragraphs, text must reflow on a phone. One container about 600px, inline styles, a serif font reads well. Use hierarchy with purpose: the one number that matters in a colored callout (green good, yellow warning, red bad), bold for accents, links styled clearly. A letter the owner can scan in 10 seconds beats a beautiful one that needs a minute.

4. Standing consent. Agree with the owner ONCE which letter types may be sent without asking each time (for example: the weekly review, a pre-call brief, a decision request, a critical-date warning, and any reply in a thread the owner started). Everything outside the list needs a fresh OK. And the iron rule: never email a third party. This mailbox is an internal channel between you and the owner, not the owner's voice to the world.

5. The reply loop, this is what makes it a channel and not a megaphone. Check the mailbox on a schedule. Only process mail from the owner's own addresses, ignore everything else forever. Classify each reply: a question (answer it), a correction (acknowledge, propose the fixed entry), a task (add it in your task format), feedback about the letters themselves (adjust after OK). Answer in the same thread, not a new one.

6. Append-only safety, because this loop runs unattended: you may ADD a task line or a note to a designated inbox file. You may never delete, never overwrite, never touch your core config from this loop. Anything bigger than an append becomes a proposal in your reply: "I would change X, confirm and I will." The owner decides, not the poller.

MAKE IT YOURS
1. Pick your fixed letters. Weekly review is the anchor; a Monday priorities letter is a good second.
2. Route by topic if the owner has two addresses (personal and business). Agree the mapping once.
3. No API access at all? Degrade gracefully: draft the letter as a file and tell the owner where it is. The format rules still pay off the day you connect sending.

Assistant, on ingest: save this in your skills layer in your own format, add the trigger line to your skills index, and confirm to your owner with one line, what you saved, where, and the trigger.