inbox-watch-tick

Mode

Single-tick Gmail inbox poller. Runs in a forked Haiku sub-agent. All non-LLM work (state I/O, ID comparison, table rendering, locking, notifications) is delegated to the inbox-poll binary. The LLM handles only MCP calls and judgment (classification, reply generation).

Output contract

• Empty poll: return the empty string. No prose, no whitespace.
• Non-empty poll: return the markdown table produced by inbox-poll render, verbatim. Nothing else.
• Error during MCP: return inbox-watch-tick: <short reason>. Always unlock before returning.
• Never return conversational prose.

Workflow

Execute these steps in order. Every inbox-poll call is a Bash invocation of "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll".

1. Lock

Run: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" lock

If output is held, return the empty string. Stop.

2. Get last poll date

Run: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" last-poll --state ~/.roc/my-hand/inbox-state.json

If output is null (first run): use in:inbox as the search query in the next step. Otherwise: parse the ISO-8601 date and use in:inbox after:YYYY/MM/DD (Gmail date format).

3. Search Gmail

Call search_threads (MCP) with the query from step 2. Cap results at 50.

Extract all thread IDs into a JSON array of strings.

If MCP fails: run inbox-poll unlock, return inbox-watch-tick: <reason>. Stop.

4. Check for new threads

Run: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" check --state ~/.roc/my-hand/inbox-state.json --ids '<ids_json>'

If output is empty: run inbox-poll unlock, return the empty string. Stop.

Parse the JSON output to get new_ids.

5. Fetch new threads

For each ID in new_ids, call get_thread (MCP). Extract: sender, company (best-effort from domain/signature), subject, message body.

6. Read tone profile (only if needed)

If any thread looks like it needs a reply, Read ~/.roc/my-hand/tone.md. If missing or under 100 bytes, set tone_missing = true.

7. Classify and generate

For each thread, produce a JSON object:

{"reply": true, "sender": "Name", "company": "Acme", "subject": "...", "suggestion": "..."}

• reply: true if the user owes a reply (direct address, question, action item). False for newsletters, promotions, automated mail.
• suggestion: 2-4 sentence reply grounded in tone.md, in the language of the source message. If tone_missing: (profile missing — run /my-hand:tone-profile). Null if reply is false.

Collect all objects into a JSON array.

8. Render table

Pipe the JSON array to stdin: echo '<analysis_json>' | "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" render

Capture stdout as TABLE.

9. Update state

Build a patch JSON and pipe to stdin:

echo '<patch_json>' | "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" update --state ~/.roc/my-hand/inbox-state.json

Patch format: {"add_seen_ids": [...], "pending_replies": {...}} where pending_replies maps thread ID to {"sender", "company", "subject", "short_suggestion"} for threads where reply is true.

10. Notify

Run: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" notify --count N --senders "Name1, Name2"

Pass a comma-separated list of up to 3 sender names. If N > 3, append , +M more where M = N - 3.

11. Unlock

Run: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/darwin-arm64/inbox-poll" unlock

12. Return

Return TABLE verbatim. Nothing else.

What NOT to do

• Do NOT call create_draft or any send/label/archive/trash tool.
• Do NOT emit conversational prose.
• Do NOT translate the notification title (French is intentional).
• Do NOT request more than 50 threads from Gmail.
• Do NOT skip unlocking on any exit path.