Summarly.ai – AI productivity tools

Five years ago, before the advent of large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, we had the opportunity to contribute to the field of artificial intelligence through a project that set the stage for AI-enhanced productivity tools. This project, SUMMARLY, was our early foray into using AI to transform everyday tasks, starting with email—a tool that professionals spend nearly a third of their workday managing.

The Vision: AI to Enhance Daily Communication

At SUMMARLY, our mission was clear: help people focus their mental and physical energy on what matters most by leveraging AI. The idea was to build web-based AI agents that could seamlessly integrate into everyday apps, making tedious tasks quicker and more efficient. We started with email because it had evolved from a communication tool into a multi-purpose platform for task delegation, document archiving, scheduling, and more.

Our goal was to make email smarter. We believed that if we could simplify email management, we could help professionals reclaim valuable time in their day. So, we built a series of browser extensions that integrated AI directly into Gmail, Apple Mail, and Microsoft Outlook to improve user productivity and streamline communication.

Our Contributions: AI-Powered Email Tools

• Email Reading Time for Gmail – One of our first tools estimated how long an email would take to read, similar to Medium’s reading time feature. By calculating reading time based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, professionals could prioritize their inboxes based on how much time they had available. This small but impactful feature made email management more efficient, helping users focus on the most important messages.
• Gmail Summarization – We took email management a step further with an AI-powered summarization tool. This browser extension automatically summarized lengthy email threads, highlighting the most important sentences and even suggesting labels for easy categorization. It allowed users to quickly grasp the key points of an email conversation without wading through unnecessary details.
• Short Email Writing Assistance – We also recognized the growing trend of reading emails on mobile devices and smartwatches, where long-winded messages were more of a burden than a benefit. To address this, we developed a tool that helped users craft concise emails. By limiting the number of characters allowed when writing an email, we encouraged brevity—perfect for recipients on the go.
• Readability Measurement for Emails – Inspired by the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, we developed an extension that measured the linguistic complexity of an email. This tool gave users insight into how difficult or easy an email would be to read, helping them prioritize messages based on their available time and mental energy. By filtering emails by readability score, users could focus on simpler emails when time was short and tackle more complex messages when they had the bandwidth.

The Technology: Bootstrapping an AI Startup

SUMMARLY was not just a concept—it was a fully bootstrapped AI software company. We were driven by a vision to bring production-ready AI research and development into everyday tasks for everyone, everywhere. Winning the EIT Digital Venture Program in 2019 gave us the confidence to pursue our vision, and we used that momentum to develop AI agents that could seamlessly integrate into widely-used tools like Gmail.

Our approach was simple yet ambitious: leverage natural language processing (NLP) to make email smarter and more productive. The extensions we created for Gmail empowered users to manage their inboxes more effectively, save time, and communicate more efficiently.