---
title: AI in Yellowbird
updated: 2026-10-16
summary: A daily AI briefing of your inbox, and summaries of long conversations when you ask.
section: Your inbox
order: 5
---

Yellowbird uses AI in two places, both in **Settings → AI**: the daily digest and conversation summaries. Neither ever reads mail from people waiting in [Screening](/help/screening) or from blocked senders, and nothing is used to train models.

## Daily digest

Turn on **Daily digest** to get a message from Yellowbird in your inbox once a day. It's mail, not a notification, so it never shows on your lock screen. Choose the hour it arrives; it uses this device's time zone unless you pick another. On days when nothing happened, it doesn't arrive.

On a paid plan, it opens with an AI briefing that picks out what most likely needs you. The briefing is written from the senders, subjects and previews of new mail in your inbox, never from whole messages. It can be wrong, so below it the digest always lists everything that arrived, who's waiting in Screening, aliases that [leaked](/help/leaks), and how much mail to blocked aliases and senders was held back. On a free plan, you get the list without the briefing.

## Conversation summaries

On a paid plan, turn on **Summarise conversations**. Yellowbird explains what that means before it's switched on. Conversation summaries are off until you do.

Then open a conversation and choose **Summarise**, or press **⇧ S**. You get a few sentences on what it's about and where it stands, any dates or decisions worth remembering, and anything someone asked you to do that you haven't answered yet. Choose one of those to go to the message that asked.

A summary is only written when you ask for one. It reads the conversation you have open: who wrote each message, when, the subject, the text of each message and the names of any attachments. Your own replies are included, so it can tell what you've already answered. Quoted earlier replies are left out, so each message counts once. In very long conversations it reads the first message and the newest ones, and says so.

It never reads mail in Screening or Blocked, mail from someone you haven't approved yet, what's inside attachments and images, or your drafts.

The summary is kept with the conversation, so it's there next time you open it. When a new message arrives, it's marked **Out of date** until you summarise again. It's deleted with the mail it describes.

## It can be wrong

Briefings and summaries are written by a machine, so check the messages before you act on one. They never contain links, email addresses you haven't been sent, or formatting, so a message can't use them to send you somewhere.

## Monthly AI budget

Paid plans include a monthly AI budget, shared by the digest's briefing and conversation summaries. It's enough for about 200 long conversations a month as well as your daily digest, and many more short ones. See how much you've used at the top of **Settings → AI**. It resets on the first of each month and doesn't carry over.

When it's used up, **Summarise** stops working until the next month, and your daily digest arrives with just its list.

## Who runs the AI

The AI runs on Cloudflare's Workers AI, on Cloudflare's own hardware. Cloudflare already runs Yellowbird and stores your mail, so no other company sees it. See our [privacy notice](/privacy#who-processes-your-data) and [security page](/security) for more.