An AI agent that works in your Gmail
Connect Gmail and Ara can find who is waiting on you, draft replies from your company's own facts, tidy your labels and send when told. You ask from Slack, a linked messenger or the dashboard: it does not sit inside Gmail's own screen. Sending runs without a pause unless you set a rule, so decide that first.
How it connects: Through Composio, on your own Google account by default. A workspace can connect a shared company account instead. Tokens are held for you and never written to the sandbox.
What Ara does with Gmail
Find who is waiting on you
You say: Who outside the company has been waiting more than two working days for a reply from me?
Ara lists recent threads, finds those whose last message came in and got no reply, and names the person and what they asked, oldest first. It does not report how many unread mails you have.
Tools it can use
- GMAIL_LIST_THREADS
- GMAIL_FETCH_MESSAGE_BY_THREAD_ID
Draft a reply from your own facts
You say: Draft a reply to [customer]'s refund question.
Ara checks what your company has written down and what you told this customer before. If the policy is not on record, it is told to say so and ask, not to make one up. A promise such as a refund or a date is marked for a person to confirm.
Tools it can use
- GMAIL_CREATE_EMAIL_DRAFT
- GMAIL_UPDATE_DRAFT
Send after you have seen it
You say: Send [name] the follow-up we discussed, and show me first.
Ara is told to ask first when you say so. You get a card with the recipients and the body, and you can change the wording. With "Asks a person first" on Gmail that card is enforced. Without the rule, it rests on Ara following its instructions.
Tools it can use
- GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL
- GMAIL_REPLY_TO_THREAD
Sort and label on request
You say: Label everything from [supplier] as Orders, and make a filter so new mail goes there too.
Ara makes the label, applies it to what it finds and adds a Gmail filter, so new mail is sorted by Gmail itself, without Ara running.
Tools it can use
- GMAIL_CREATE_LABEL
- GMAIL_ADD_LABEL_TO_EMAIL
- GMAIL_CREATE_FILTER
Get a morning note, or silence
You say: Nothing to ask: this starts when you connect your own Gmail.
On connecting, Ara takes one read-only first look over the last 14 days. After that a morning brief runs on weekdays at 07:30 and raises three things only: somebody waiting, a promise that came due, and a new thread asking for a price or a quantity. On most days it says nothing.
Tools it can use
- GMAIL_LIST_THREADS
What a reply looks like
Request: Morning brief, weekdays at 07:30
Reply: [Name] at [company] asked for a quote on [date] and has had no reply. You told [name] you would send [document] by [date], and nothing has gone out since. Say "draft both" and I will write them for you to check.
Setup
- In the dashboard, open Your apps, search for Gmail and press Connect. Sign-in happens on the app's own page.
- Open Permissions on the connected app. Every tool is on until you switch it off, and "Reads only" leaves only the reads.
- To have sending wait for a person, ask an admin to add a rule for Gmail: "Asks a person first".
- The weekday brief needs a workspace admin. If that isn't you, an admin has to open the page once.
Runs without asking
- Reading mail: listing threads, opening a message, fetching an attachment.
- With no rule, GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL goes out as soon as Ara calls it, and GMAIL_DELETE_THREAD deletes. Both are on until you switch them off.
- The first look and the morning brief are told to read and propose only. That is an instruction in their brief, not a lock.
What waits for a person
- Under "Asks a person first", a send shows you the recipients, subject and body, and waits.
- Under "Never runs", Ara can still read mail and report, and sends nothing.
- Mail reads aren't held by a rule. A few account-setting reads are, such as GMAIL_WHO_AM_I.
Limits
- A shared company inbox gets no first look and no morning brief. Those read a person's own connection.
- It can only see what the connected account can see.
- Text in an email is treated as data, never as an order, but no filter is perfect. Keep sending under a rule if your inbox receives mail from strangers.
When Ara is not the right fit for Gmail
- You want help while you type in Gmail's own window, such as summaries and a writing side panel. That is what Gemini in Gmail is for.
- You run a shared support inbox with assignment and queues. Ara is not a help desk.
- You need each new mail handled within seconds of arriving. A run doesn't start on new mail today.
How control works on every connected app
- Every tool has a switch on the account that connected it. All are on until you switch them off, and "Reads only" leaves only the reads. A switched-off tool never runs.
- An admin can set one rule per app: "Runs without asking", "Asks a person first" or "Never runs". With no rule, which is the default, nothing waits, and that includes sending, changing and deleting.
- A waiting action shows what would change. Any member can decide it, and if nobody does, it expires and nothing runs. The decision can be made in the dashboard.
- A rule tells reads from changes by the tool's name. That is why this page names the exceptions on this app.
- Ara looks when asked or on a schedule. Starting a run the moment something changes in an app is not switched on for arator.rinda.ai today.
- Ara acts as the connected account, with one live account per app. To switch accounts, disconnect first. You work with Ara in Slack, a linked messenger or the dashboard, not inside the app.
- Only a workspace admin can create a schedule, and not from a group chat.
- What Ara reads passes through Composio and a model provider. If your data may not pass through a third party, Ara is not for you. We don't train models on your data, and what a provider keeps follows its own terms.
Tool names
A sample from the catalogue on arator.rinda.ai, read on 2026-11-04, with the class Ara shows on the permissions screen. Composio owns this list and can change it, so your permissions screen is the current one. Every tool has its own switch.
Read
- GMAIL_FETCH_EMAILS
- GMAIL_LIST_THREADS
- GMAIL_FETCH_MESSAGE_BY_THREAD_ID
- GMAIL_GET_ATTACHMENT
- GMAIL_LIST_LABELS
- GMAIL_SEARCH_PEOPLE
Write
- GMAIL_CREATE_EMAIL_DRAFT
- GMAIL_REPLY_TO_THREAD
- GMAIL_SEND_EMAIL
- GMAIL_FORWARD_MESSAGE
- GMAIL_ADD_LABEL_TO_EMAIL
- GMAIL_CREATE_FILTER
- GMAIL_MOVE_TO_TRASH
Deletes or overwrites
- GMAIL_DELETE_MESSAGE
- GMAIL_DELETE_THREAD
- GMAIL_BATCH_DELETE_MESSAGES
- GMAIL_SEND_DRAFT
Questions
- Will Ara send email without asking?
- It can, if you tell it to and no rule says otherwise. It is told to draft and stop unless you clearly asked it to send, but only a rule or a switched-off tool makes that certain.
- Can I make Ara read-only on Gmail?
- Yes. Press "Reads only" in the app's permissions, or have an admin set Gmail to "Never runs".
- Does it work with a shared company inbox?
- A workspace can connect a company account that everyone in it shares. Use a rule there, because everyone's requests act on the same mailbox. It gets no morning brief.
What it costs
Free to start with 20 credits and no card. 1 credit per completed run plus external data lookups; failed runs cost nothing. Business is quoted. A scheduled run and a first look use credits like any other completed run, even on a quiet day when you hear nothing.
How we checked this
Read from Ara's own code and the live site on 2026-11-04. Example jobs show what the tools and instructions allow, and an AI model can still get things wrong. If something here is out of date, tell us
Products mentioned
Other integrations
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