Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are disclosed for enhancing an email application to automatically analyze an email thread and generate a compact content summary. The content summary is based on relative content contributions provided by the constituent email messages in the email thread. The content summary may be presented in a special window without disturbing or modifying the email thread or its constituent email messages. The distinctive content summary disclosed herein comprises certain sentences that are automatically gleaned from the email thread, analyzed relative to other sentences, and presented in a chronological sequence so that the user can quickly determine what the email thread is about and/or the current status of the conversation. The content summary is based on email weights, word weights, and intersecting sentence pairs.