Smart Compose

Smart Compose has matured from Gmail-style inline word completion (circa 2018-2020) to per-recipient context-aware drafting in 2026.

How modern Smart Compose works

The model ingests four context channels:

1. Recipient profile. Name, title, company, prior interactions. 2. Thread history. Prior messages in the same thread. 3. Sender style. Recent messages from the same sender, anonymised, to match voice. 4. Intent. The sender selects intent (book a meeting, follow up on proposal, ask a question) which steers structure.

How to use it well

• Use it to draft, then edit ruthlessly. AI drafts are most useful as a 70 percent starting point, not a 100 percent finished message.
• Keep the opening line manually personalised. The first 8-12 words are what separates a tailored cold email from a templated one.
• Match it to message type. Smart Compose adds the most value on follow-ups and thread responses where the context is dense. on first-touch cold email, the model has less to work with.

Where it goes wrong

• Hallucinated facts. Sales emails that fabricate the recipient's recent activity damage trust. Disable factual claims about the recipient unless verified.
• Templated patterns. Smart Compose tends toward the median of training data; the median sales email is forgettable.