I built an AI email tool that refuses to send emails. Here's why.

Hey everyone — I'm Paul. I run a food business (ramen program for universities) and spend way too much of my day replying to emails. Not reading them — that part's fast. It's the blank reply box that kills me.

Last year I started building Drafted, a Mac app that pre-drafts Gmail replies using AI. The twist: it runs 100% locally on your machine and never auto-sends anything. Every draft waits for you to review, edit, and hit send yourself.

I built it this way because every AI email tool I tried wanted full access to my inbox routed through their cloud. As someone whose inbox has vendor contracts, franchise negotiations, and employee conversations — that was a dealbreaker. I figured other people felt the same way.

The AI also scores its own confidence on each draft, so you know at a glance which ones are ready to send and which need more attention. It's like having an assistant who tells you "I'm only 60% sure about this one."

I'm a solo builder, not a developer by trade. This is my first real product launch. No funding, no team, just me and a problem I wanted to solve for myself that turned out to be pretty universal.

Would love to connect with other builders here, especially anyone working in the AI/productivity space or anyone who's navigated the "how do I actually get this in front of people" phase. What's worked for you?

If you're curious: trydrafted.app