Sidecar / Tools / Draft Rot Tracker

Finds the half-written email you forgot three weeks ago.

Marks Gmail drafts that have sat unsent, once a day at most, with snooze and ignore.

One of the eight tools in the Sidecar Studios extension. One download, one licence key.

Draft Rot Tracker is a Chrome extension that marks Gmail drafts which have been sitting unsent. A small dot appears beside your Drafts folder when something has gone stale, and a corner panel lists them at most once a day with options to open, snooze or ignore each one.

Two surfaces, both quiet

The dot. A small blue dot beside Drafts in the left nav whenever something has gone stale. It never animates and never interrupts.

The chip. A small corner panel listing what has gone stale, shown at most once per day, and never twice for the same draft on the same day. That cadence lives in the detection engine rather than the interface, so it cannot drift as the UI changes.

Why there is no Send button

There is deliberately no one-click Send now and no one-click Discard. Both are irreversible actions on a message you have not looked at in days and cannot read from a summary panel. Sending an unfinished email is exactly the kind of mistake the rest of this catalog exists to prevent.

The actions are Open, Snooze a week, and Ignore. Open takes you to the draft, where sending or discarding is your decision with the text in front of you.

What it skips

Drafts younger than three days. Drafts with neither a recipient nor a subject, which are scratch notes rather than unsent messages. Anything you snoozed, until the snooze expires. Anything you marked ignore, permanently.

One honest limit

A browser extension can only read what Gmail has rendered. It learns your drafts by reading the Drafts list when you visit it, and caches their ages locally from there. On a fresh install the dot stays dark until you open Drafts once. After that it stays current every time you pass through.

Permissions

Gmail only, plus local storage. It runs on Gmail and nowhere else. Draft subjects and dates are cached in your own browser profile so ages survive a reload, and are deleted when you uninstall.

Questions

About Draft Rot Tracker

Will it nag me every time I open Gmail?

No. The panel appears at most once per calendar day, and never twice for the same draft on the same day. The dot beside Drafts is always accurate but never interrupts.

What about a draft I am keeping on purpose, like a template?

Snooze it for a week, or mark it Ignore and it will never be mentioned again.

Why can I not send or delete from the panel?

Because both are irreversible actions on a message you cannot read from the panel. Open takes you to the draft so you can decide with the text in front of you.

Does it see my drafts if I never open the Drafts folder?

No. It reads the Drafts list when you visit it and caches ages from there. Open Drafts once after installing and it stays current from then on.

Installing? The four step guide covers it.