# Prompt: write my email voice guide from my sent mail

**Read this first.** This is a starting point for prompting, not a finished tool. Results vary by model, and a good prompt does not make an AI safe to leave alone. AI can still leak private details into an email or promise things you cannot keep.

**What you need:** an AI tool connected to your email, either through an MCP server or the tool's own mail connector (for example Claude or ChatGPT with a Gmail or Outlook connection). It only needs read access to your Sent mail. Before you connect anything:

- Give it read-only access. Check exactly what the connection can do, and switch off sending, deleting and editing if you can.
- Never let it send anything for you.
- Read every draft yourself before it goes.
- Do not connect mail to a tool you do not control, and do not paste confidential or client data into one. Your sent mail will include client emails, so check where the tool stores and uses what it reads.

Then paste everything below the line into your AI tool.

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You have read-only access to my email through a connector. Use it to work out how I actually write, then write me a voice guide I can paste at the start of future chats so an AI drafts emails that sound like me. Use only read and search actions. Do not send, draft, delete, label or change anything.

## Step 0: find my emails

Search my Sent folder for emails I wrote myself before 30 November 2022, which is before ChatGPT launched, so none of them were written with AI help. Read as many as you can. Aim for a few hundred, and say how many you actually read.

Skip:

- forwards and replies that only forward something
- auto-replies, out-of-office messages and calendar invites
- emails that are mostly pasted text from someone else
- anything confidential or sensitive: legal, medical, financial account details, passwords, personal matters, anything about people outside the conversation

If my account has fewer than 50 suitable emails from before that date, tell me and stop, rather than guessing from too little.

Do not copy my emails anywhere except the six examples in Step 3.

## Step 1: measure

For these, give counts or percentages across all the emails you read:

- **Sentence openers.** The first one or two words of my sentences. Which do I use most (for example "I", "Let me know", "We", "If")? Which words that an AI would normally start sentences with do I rarely or never use (for example "The", "It", "There", "Happy", "Thanks so much")?
- **Paragraph length.** The median number of words in a paragraph, and how many of my paragraphs are a single sentence.
- **Joins.** How often I link two thoughts in one sentence with a dash, "and" or a comma, instead of splitting them. Give it per 100 words.
- **Rhythm.** The median sentence length, the share of sentences of six words or fewer, and the share over 30 words. Say whether my lengths are even or uneven.
- **Small marks.** The share of my emails that use exclamation marks, brackets, slashes (like 12:30/1pm), "...", an emoji, bullet lists, bold or other emphasis, and spaced dashes.
- **Length.** The median word count of a whole email, and the shortest and longest.
- **Greetings and sign-offs.** How I open (the exact greeting, and what the line after it usually is) and how I close, with counts for each version.
- **Words I lean on** and **words I avoid**, if there is a clear pattern.

Also check whether my style differs by audience (close colleagues, clients, strangers). If it does, measure each separately.

## Step 2: turn the counts into rules

Write plain rules, each with its number. For example: "Paragraphs are one or two sentences, median about 9 words." Cover everything in Step 1.

Include this rule, because it is the one AI most often gets wrong: **conversational, not clipped.** If I ask for "short, punchy sentences", an AI cuts the small words out and produces tidy, compressed sentences that read as machine-written. Keep my emails short by covering fewer points, never by cutting words out of sentences.

Also add rules on what to avoid if you see a pattern: signposts and labels ("Quick correction on timing:"), stock phrases, tidy justifications, repeating the ask at the end, and paragraphs of equal length. Only include rules my emails support. Do not invent any.

## Step 3: pick six examples

Choose six of my emails to keep as examples, covering different situations and my range (a long one, a one-liner, a reply, a request). For each, quote it exactly as I wrote it, but replace every name, company, figure, address, link and any other identifying detail with a placeholder like [Name] or [figure]. If an email cannot be made anonymous without losing its point, pick another. List which six you chose and why.

## Step 4: write the voice guide

Write one ready-to-save document, headed "My email voice guide", that I can paste at the start of any future chat. It must contain, in this order:

1. A short instruction line: "You are drafting an email for me. Match the rules and examples below."
2. My measured rules from Step 2, with numbers, and how many emails they come from.
3. The six anonymised examples from Step 3, with the line: "Match the rhythm, openers, length and small marks of these. Do not copy phrases from them."
4. This section, exactly as written:

   **My note is background, not content.** Anything I tell you about an email (a note, an instruction, context) is for you only. Put into the email only what the recipient should know. Do not repeat my instructions, your reasoning, other people's details, other projects or clients, or anything the recipient has not been told.

5. These checks, to run on your own draft and report before you give it to me:

   **Leak check.** Does the email contain anything the recipient has not been told and should not see? My instructions, your reasoning, other people's details, or projects and clients that appear only in my note. If yes, remove it and say so.

   **Promise check.** Does the email promise a time, date, fee or deliverable that depends on something still unresolved? "I'll come back to you with some times once I have that" is fine. Naming the times is not. If yes, rewrite it and say so.

   **Voice check.** Does the draft break any of my rules above? If so, name up to three specific giveaways. Do not tune the draft to beat an AI detector: detectors measure how generic text is, not who wrote it.

6. A closing line: "I will read every draft myself before it goes. Never send for me."

## Rules for this task

- Read only. Never send, draft, delete or change anything in my mailbox.
- Use only what is in my emails. If you cannot measure something from them, say so instead of guessing.
- British English, unless my emails clearly use another spelling.
- Do not use em dashes in anything you write.
- When you have finished, tell me how many emails you read and skipped, and which parts of the guide you are least sure of, so I can check them.