💡 New script: gmail-contact-intelligence (email relationship analytics & blind spot alerts)

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

Analyze email communication patterns to generate a contact health dashboard in Google Sheets, surfacing relationship blind spots (important contacts you've lost touch with), communication frequency trends, and response time patterns. Weekly email alerts when key contacts haven't been in touch beyond a configurable threshold. A lightweight, privacy-respecting alternative to enterprise CRM contact analytics.

Market Signal

Enterprise CRMs (Salesforce at $25-300/user/month, HubSpot at $15-150/user/month) provide contact analytics but are overkill for individuals and small teams. No Workspace-native tool provides lightweight contact analytics. Read.ai's Personal Knowledge Graph validates demand for cross-channel relationship intelligence, but Read.ai is meeting-centric and paid. The calendar-meeting-prep idea (#504) identifies pre-meeting attendee intelligence as a gap — contact analytics feeds directly into that use case. No open-source tool addresses this niche.

User Signal

No existing idea in the backlog covers Google Contacts or email relationship analytics — this fills a completely unserved surface area in the project's script catalog. Freelancers, consultants, and small business owners — a core target persona for this project — need relationship management without CRM overhead. The project's existing calendar scripts demonstrate Workspace API competency that extends naturally to contact analysis.

Technical Opportunity

MVP requires no Gemini API — pure Gmail metadata analysis (sender/recipient frequency, dates, response patterns) using GmailApp.search() with date-range queries. Output to Sheets follows the calendar-to-sheets pattern. The dual-file architecture enables thorough testing of frequency calculations and trend detection. Can later add Gemini-powered relationship summaries as an enhancement. Low API cost since it analyzes message headers (from/to/date), not message content. Gmail search quotas are sufficient for weekly batch processing.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	No Gemini required for MVP; pure metadata analysis using existing GmailApp APIs; Sheets output follows proven calendar-to-sheets pattern
Impact	high	No free Workspace-native alternative exists; fills the gap between zero contact analytics and expensive CRM; directly serves freelancer/consultant persona
Urgency	med	No specific time trigger, but growing demand for relationship management tools and the gap left by enterprise CRM pricing increases

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: This is essentially a lightweight CRM being shoe-horned into a personal productivity tool. Users who need CRM features will use a real CRM. Individual users who don't need a CRM already know who they talk to frequently.

Rebuttal: The real value is blind spot detection, not CRM replacement. Professionals routinely lose touch with important contacts without realizing it. A simple weekly alert — "You haven't emailed [key client] in 45 days" — is genuinely actionable and not served by any existing free tool. The MVP is email frequency analysis to Sheets with optional threshold alerts, not a full CRM. The relationship health framing resonates with freelancers and consultants whose income depends on maintaining professional networks.

Suggested Next Step

Define the MVP Sheet schema (contact email, display name, last sent date, last received date, 30-day message count, 90-day trend direction, configurable alert threshold) and implement the metadata-only analysis pipeline without Gemini dependency. Validate Gmail search quota consumption for typical inbox sizes (1,000-10,000 contacts).