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Senses & Connections

Gmail

The Gmail integration syncs your inbox into River as Email and EmailThread entities — searchable, openable, and actionable by AI. It's one of the highest-leverage Senses you can connect.

What it does#

Once connected, Gmail integration gives you:

  • Full inbox sync — every email becomes an entity with subject, body, attachments, labels, and metadata
  • Real-time updates — new emails arrive as email.received events on your Event Stream
  • Search across mail — full-text, by sender, by label, by thread
  • Compose, reply, send — from inside River, via the Mail App
  • Attachments as entities — PDFs, images, and docs become first-class entities, not blobs
  • Multiple accounts — connect personal, work, and shared inboxes side by side

Setup#

  1. Open Settings → Integrations → Gmail
  2. Click Connect Gmail and complete the Google OAuth flow
  3. Choose which labels to sync (default: Inbox, Sent, plus any you select)
  4. Choose where new mail entities land (default: a "Mail" Group at the root of your Dataspace)

Initial sync takes a few minutes for active inboxes. New mail arrives in real time after that.

What Gmail unlocks for AI#

Gmail is the single highest-impact integration because so many workflows start with email. Once it's connected, you can:

  • Ask SpaceChat anything about your inbox: "what's in my inbox today?", "find emails from investors mentioning runway", "draft a reply to the latest from Acme."
  • Build an Inbox Triage Agent that runs on email.received and classifies, files, and drafts replies.
  • Build a Morning Briefer that reads overnight mail and synthesizes a 7am summary.
  • Use the Mail App for AI-powered triage with smart folders and one-click composition.

Smart folders#

Beyond Gmail's built-in labels, you can create Smart Folders in River — saved searches that stay live. Examples:

  • "Investor pipeline" — emails from VCs you're tracking
  • "Needs reply today" — anything classified as urgent and unread
  • "Customer escalations" — high-priority threads from paid customers

A Smart Folder is just a saved query over your Email entities. It updates automatically as new mail arrives.

Multi-account#

Connect as many Gmail accounts as you want. River keeps them separate but lets the AI search across all of them at once when relevant. You can scope an Agent to a specific account ("Inbox Triage runs only on my work email").

Privacy & control#

  • Gmail OAuth is the only way River accesses your mail — no password storage.
  • You can disconnect at any time. Already-synced emails stay; new mail stops flowing.
  • Sensitive labels (e.g., "Personal") can be excluded from sync.
  • Disable AI access to specific accounts in Settings → Integrations → Gmail → AI access.

Tips#

  • Connect all your Gmail accounts on day one — the AI's value compounds across mail.
  • Configure your Inbox Triage Agent to draft only, not send, until you trust it.
  • The Mail App is the daily-driver UI. SpaceChat is the natural-language layer on top.