Turn starred Gmail emails into TickTick tasks automatically

PromptCreate

Every hour during my working day, on weekdays between 8am and 6pm, turn the emails I have flagged in Gmail into properly written TickTick tasks.

Start by resolving my processed label. Use Gmail List Labels to find a user label called Processed-TickTick. If it does not exist yet, create it with Gmail Create a Label. I need its label id later, and I need its name for the search query.

Then find the flagged mail with Gmail List Messages, using a search query that picks up starred messages that are not already carrying that label, along the lines of is:starred -label:Processed-TickTick. If nothing comes back, stop quietly without creating anything. Handle at most 25 messages in a single run so a big backlog does not turn into a flood of tasks, and let the rest wait for the next hour.

For each message, call Gmail Get a Message with the full detail level so you read the actual body rather than just the subject and headers. The body is where the real ask and the real deadline live, and the subject line is usually a poor summary of both.

Decide whether the email genuinely requires an action from me. Skip newsletters, marketing emails, receipts, order and shipping confirmations, automated system or billing alerts, and no-reply notifications. Skip purely informational mail that needs no response from me. Being selective is the point of this workflow, so do not manufacture a task just because something was starred.

For every email that does need an action, write the task title as a short verb phrase describing what I have to do. Do not reuse the subject line. Reply to Priya with the revised Q3 pricing sheet is a good title. Fwd: pricing question is not. Keep it under roughly 80 characters and make it readable on its own, weeks later, without the email next to it.

Infer the due date from the wording of the email. Phrases like by Friday, before end of month, EOD today or ahead of Thursday's call should all become a concrete date. TickTick expects ISO 8601, formatted as yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ. Resolve relative wording against the date the email was sent, not today's date, so a message from last week saying by Friday does not land on the wrong week. If the email implies no deadline at all, leave the due date unset rather than inventing one.

Set the priority from how urgent the sender actually sounds, judging the tone and timing of the request rather than trusting the word urgent in a subject line. TickTick only accepts 0 for none, 1 for low, 3 for medium and 5 for high. Use 5 when a client or my manager is blocked, the deadline is inside two days, or they are chasing something already late. Use 3 for a clear ask with a deadline further out. Use 1 for something worth doing with no time pressure. Use 0 when there is no signal either way.

Put the context into the task content so I never have to hunt for it. Include the sender's name and email address, one or two sentences stating the specific ask in plain language, any deadline wording quoted from the email, and a link back to the original message in the form https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/MESSAGE_ID using that message's id.

Create the task with TickTick Create Task. Use TickTick List All Projects once at the start of the run and file the tasks into my Inbox project unless a more obvious list exists, reusing the same project id for the whole run rather than looking it up per task.

Only after the task has been created successfully, apply the processed label to that email with Gmail Modify Message Labels. This ordering matters. The label is the only thing stopping the same email becoming a second task on the next hourly run, so it must never be applied before the task exists, and if creating a task fails then leave that email unlabelled so the next run retries it. Also apply the label to the emails you deliberately skipped, otherwise every starred newsletter gets re-read every hour forever. Leave the star in place either way so I can still see what I flagged.

Finish with a short summary of the run: the tasks created with their due dates and priorities, and a count of how many emails were skipped with a one line reason for each.

Example output

Task: Send Priya the revised Q3 pricing sheet List: Work Due: Friday 14 Aug Priority: High From: Priya Raman (priya@northwind.co) Ask: Wants the updated pricing sheet with the new enterprise tier before the board reviews it on Friday. She has asked once already. Original email: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/18f2c9a1b4e7d3c0 --- Skipped this run: 3 emails (Stripe receipt, AWS billing alert, Figma product newsletter)

What does this prompt do?

Checks every hour during your working day for emails you starred and have not already turned into a task
Reads the whole email, not just the subject line, and decides whether it genuinely needs an action from you. Newsletters, receipts and automated notifications get skipped instead of becoming busywork
Writes each task as a clear next action rather than copying the subject line, works out the deadline from phrases like by Friday or end of the month, and sets the priority from how urgent the sender actually sounds
Puts the sender, the specific ask and a link straight back to the original email into the task, so you never have to go hunting for context
Marks each email as handled once its task exists, so the same email can never turn into a second task on the next run

What do I need to use this?

A Gmail account
A TickTick account
A Gmail label used to mark emails that have already been handled. If you do not have one, the workflow creates it for you the first time it runs
The habit of starring the emails you want to act on

How can I customize it?

Change the hours and days it runs, for example every 30 minutes or only in the morning
Use one of your own Gmail labels instead of the star to mark which emails should become tasks
Pick which TickTick list the tasks land in, and adjust how sender urgency maps onto priority
Tighten or loosen what counts as skippable, for instance if you do want receipts tracked

FAQs

Will it create duplicate tasks every time it runs?

No. As soon as a task is created, the email is marked with your handled label, and the next run ignores anything carrying that label. Emails it deliberately skips get marked too, so they are not re-read every hour. If creating the task fails for any reason, the email is left untouched and gets picked up again on the next run.

What happens to newsletters, receipts and automated notifications?

They are skipped on purpose. The whole point is that the workflow reads the email and judges whether it actually needs something from you, rather than blindly copying every starred message into your task list. Order confirmations, marketing emails and system alerts do not become tasks.

What if an email does not mention a deadline?

The task is created without a due date rather than inventing one. Deadlines are only set when the email actually implies one, for example by Friday, end of the month, or before our call on Thursday.

Can I use something other than the star to flag emails?

Yes. The star is just the default because it is the fastest thing to tap on a phone. You can point it at any Gmail label you already use, such as one called To Do, and only those emails will be considered.

Will it read emails I have not starred?

No. It only ever looks at messages you have explicitly starred or labelled, and it only reads them to work out what the task should say.

How does it decide the priority?

It reads the tone and the timing of the actual request, so a client chasing something that is already late outranks a colleague asking for a favour next month. It does not just trust the word urgent in a subject line.

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