Email Summaries
A long email isn't always worth a full read. MailPrism's AI can condense a single message into a short, plain-language summary.
Today, summaries power the {ai_summary} variable in rule reply templates — for
example, an auto-reply that says "Here's what you sent:" followed by {ai_summary}.
See Templates for the other variables.
There's no button in the inbox to show a summary for an email you're reading.
Summaries are generated when a rule's template uses {ai_summary}.
Summaries use AI, so they only run after you've turned on AI data processing in Settings → Privacy. See AI privacy & consent.
How a summary is created
When a template needs {ai_summary} for an email, MailPrism:
- Checks for a recent summary of that email — if one exists, it's reused (no new AI call).
- Otherwise, sends the email's text to an AI provider to write the summary.
- Saves the result for reuse.
Caching
Summaries are cached for about 24 hours. Within that window, the same email reuses its summary — fast and at no extra AI cost. After that, a new summary is written the next time one is needed.
What gets sent for analysis
Only the first 2,000 characters of the email's body are sent, along with basic details like the subject and sender. A very long message is summarized from its opening portion. The providers are the same ones used elsewhere in MailPrism — see AI privacy & consent.
With Send Auto-Reply, {ai_summary} goes out in an email sent from your
account with no review step. Create Draft Reply only saves a draft in Gmail, so
nothing is sent until you send it yourself. Test the rule first (see
Testing rules) and prefer Create Draft Reply while you
check the wording.
→ Related: Reading an email · AI, Explained