Template Snippets for People Who Write the Same Email Twice a Day
How workcmd template snippets work, what to put in them, and why they're more useful than Gmail's built-in canned responses.
Gmail has canned responses. They work, technically. You save a message, you insert it, you send. But anyone who has used them for more than a week knows the friction - buried in a menu, no keyboard shortcut, hard to find when you have more than a handful. workcmd snippets solve the same problem with a much shorter path: type a trigger code while composing, and your full message is already there.
How to create your first snippet - step by step
Open the workcmd panel in Gmail using the sidebar toggle. Navigate to the Snippets tab and click 'New Snippet'. Give it a name like 'Follow-up after call' and set a short trigger - /fu works well. Paste or type the message body, including any placeholder text you want to fill in later, such as {clientName} or {deadline}. Hit Save. That's the whole setup. Next time you're composing, type /fu and the full message appears. Edit what needs editing and send.
How triggers actually work
You set a short code - /fu for follow-up, /invoice for payment request, /onboard for new client instructions - and type it anywhere in a compose window. workcmd detects it and expands the full template immediately. No menus. No clicking. The trigger disappears and your message appears. You can still edit anything before sending, so it's not a form letter - it's a starting point that's already 80% done.
What to put in snippets first
Start with the messages you write three or more times a week. For most people in client-facing or team-facing roles, that means: meeting follow-ups, project status updates, invoice reminders, onboarding instructions, troubleshooting steps for recurring issues, and responses to questions you get asked constantly. If you've typed it before and thought 'I've definitely written this before,' it belongs in a snippet.
How to use variables for personalised replies
workcmd supports variables inside templates - things like client name, date, or deadline - so your snippet inserts a mostly-complete message with clearly marked blanks to fill in. Write your template with single-brace placeholders: 'Hi {name}, following up on our call about {topic} last {day}.' When the snippet expands, workcmd can collect or highlight those values so you can fill them before sending.
How to organise snippets as the library grows
Once you have more than ten snippets, a flat list gets unwieldy. workcmd keeps each snippet tied to a short trigger and displays the name beside it in the compose dropdown. A good naming convention helps: prefix client-facing replies with 'c-' and internal ones with 'i-' so typing /c or /i quickly narrows the options even when the library grows.
Snippets with variables are even faster
A sales follow-up that says 'Hi {name}, following up on our call about {topic} last {day}' takes about five seconds to personalise. This keeps the reply personal without requiring you to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
This isn't just a Gmail feature
The compose window is a compose window. Whether you're replying to a thread that originated from a GitHub PR comment forwarded to your email, or following up on a Google Docs share, or responding to a Slack notification you received as an email - snippets work in any compose context. The workflow is consistent across whatever lands in your inbox.
Pairing snippets with reminders
Snippets handle the writing. Reminders handle the timing. Send a proposal using a snippet, set a reminder for five days later, and you'll never forget to follow up because you got busy. The two features solve different parts of the same problem - the reply you need to send and the follow-up you can't forget.
Make inbox cleanup repeatable
workcmd helps teams reduce recurring noise, keep local context, and move faster across the tabs where work already happens.