Background Email Polling

How Coppermind keeps your client minds up to date with email context even when you are not in Claude - no manual ingestion, no stale sessions, no cold starts.

Why Background Polling?#

Standard email ingestion (see Email Ingestion) runs when you open Claude. That means emails arriving overnight, on weekends, or during back-to-back meetings pile up. Your next session starts with stale context, and you have to wait for a batch ingest before the system is useful.

Background polling fixes this. Once you connect your Gmail, Coppermind checks for new emails automatically every few minutes - even when Claude is closed. By the time you open your next session, recent emails are already stored as memories in the correct client minds.

This matters most when:

• You start a session Monday morning and need full weekend context immediately
• A client sends a decision or approval at 2am and you prep a meeting brief at 8am
• You onboard a new client and need their recent email history captured without a manual batch import

How It Works#

1. You connect your Gmail to Coppermind (one-time setup)
2. A background process checks for new emails every few minutes
3. Each email is matched to the correct client mind using sender/recipient addresses and company domains
4. Memories are extracted and stored - decisions, commitments, preferences, campaign outcomes
5. When you open Claude, the context is already fresh

The polling runs on Coppermind's cloud infrastructure. Your machine does not need to be on, and Claude does not need to be open.

Connecting Your Gmail#

Run this in Claude:

"Connect my Gmail for background polling"

Coppermind will return a URL. Open it in your browser, sign in with Google, and authorize read-only access to your Gmail. Once you approve, Coppermind confirms the connection and polling begins within a few minutes.

What permissions are requested: Read-only access to Gmail. Coppermind never sends, deletes, or modifies your emails.

First poll: The first time it runs, Coppermind pulls the last 7 days of email. After that, it only fetches new messages since the last check.

Checking Polling Status#

Ask Claude:

"What's the status of my email ingestion?"

The status report now includes background polling information alongside the standard ingestion details:

How Emails Are Attributed#

Background polling uses the same attribution logic as standard ingestion:

1. Known contacts - Sender email matched against stakeholder records on your client minds
2. Company domains - Sender domain matched against company_info.domain on client minds
3. Outbound emails - When you are the sender, recipients are matched against client minds instead

This last point is important: your sent emails (recommendations, strategy advice, commitments) are captured too, not just inbound messages.

Emails from unknown senders#

When an email does not match any client mind, it is not silently dropped. It is held in a pending queue and counted in your status report. This way, emails from new prospects or contacts are never lost - you just need to add them as stakeholders on the appropriate client mind.

What Gets Filtered Out#

The same filters apply as standard email ingestion:

• Auto-replies and out-of-office messages
• Newsletters and marketing emails (detected by List-Unsubscribe headers)
• Calendar invitations
• Automated notifications (from noreply@ addresses)
• Duplicate messages already ingested

Managing Your Connection#

Disconnect#

"Disconnect my Gmail from background polling"

Polling stops immediately. Previously ingested memories remain in your client minds.

Reactivate after errors#

If polling pauses due to repeated authentication errors (for example, you changed your Google password), you will see it in the status report. To fix it:

"Reactivate my email polling"

If the issue was transient (a temporary Google outage), this resumes polling. If the issue is an expired or revoked token, Coppermind will ask you to reconnect by running the setup flow again.

Reconnect#

If your Google authorization was revoked (you removed access in Google Account settings, or changed passwords):

"Connect my Gmail for background polling"

Running the connection flow again replaces the old authorization.

Polling Frequency#

Coppermind polls each connected account on a rotating schedule. How often your account is checked depends on how many CMOs are connected:

Each poll processes up to 10 new emails. If you have a large backlog (for example, after the first connection), it drains automatically over subsequent cycles - no action needed.

Security and Privacy#

• Read-only access. Coppermind can only read your emails. It cannot send, delete, or modify them.
• Encrypted credentials. Your Gmail authorization token is encrypted at rest using envelope encryption. Even Coppermind's database administrators cannot read the raw token.
• Client isolation. Every email is validated against client mind ownership before storage. An email attributed to Client A cannot end up in Client B's client mind.
• No email content stored in plaintext on Coppermind's servers. Emails are processed into structured memories (decisions, commitments, facts) - the raw email body is not retained after extraction.

Relationship to Standard Email Ingestion#

Background polling and standard (in-session) email ingestion complement each other:

If you have both set up, deduplication ensures emails are never processed twice. Background polling handles the continuous baseline, and standard ingestion catches anything from the current session.

Troubleshooting#

Polling shows as "paused" or "error"#

Check your status report. If the error type is:

• Auth error - Your Google authorization may have expired. Run "Connect my Gmail for background polling" to re-authorize.
• Transient error - A temporary issue (Google outage, network timeout). Polling retries automatically on the next cycle. No action needed.

Emails are not appearing in the correct client mind#

Make sure the sender's email address or company domain is associated with the right client mind. Add stakeholder contacts:

"Set stakeholders for Acme: Sarah Chen (sarah@acme.com, VP Marketing)"

Pending attribution count is growing#

This means emails are arriving from addresses Coppermind does not recognize. Review who is emailing you and add them as stakeholders on the appropriate client minds.

I changed my Google password#

Re-authorize by running the connection flow again:

"Connect my Gmail for background polling"