himalaya-mcp

Privacy-first email for Claude -- MCP server and Claude Code plugin (email) wrapping the himalaya CLI.

Features

• 29 MCP tools: list, search, read, flag, move, compose, draft reply, send (with safety gate), export, action items, clipboard, folders, attachments, calendar, threads, health check, get_unread_count, read_email_raw, render_email, list_starred, create_reminder, snooze_email, list_snoozed_emails

• 7 MCP prompts: triage inbox, summarize email, daily digest, weekly digest, draft reply, morning briefing, inbox check

• 3 MCP resources: inbox, message by ID, folders

• 16 plugin skills: /email:inbox, /email:triage, /email:digest, /email:reply, /email:compose, /email:attachments, /email:search, /email:manage, /email:stats, /email:config, /email:help, /email:morning, /email:forward, /email:export, /email:threads, /email:respond

• Multi-account: per-call account switching via --account

• Reliability: account-aware diagnostics via the health_check tool and multi-account doctor; structured error envelopes with one-line fix hints

• Safe subprocess: uses execFile (no shell injection)

• Two-phase send: send_email returns preview first, requires explicit confirm=true

• Env-based config: HIMALAYA_BINARY, HIMALAYA_ACCOUNT, HIMALAYA_FOLDER, HIMALAYA_TIMEOUT

Related MCP server: mail-mcp

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap data-wise/tap
brew install himalaya-mcp

Installs himalaya CLI + Node.js as dependencies, auto-symlinks plugin to ~/.claude/plugins/.

himalaya-mcp doctor    # Verify installation

Claude Code Plugin (from GitHub)

Prerequisites: Node.js 22+ and himalaya CLI must be installed separately (brew install node himalaya).

claude plugin marketplace add Data-Wise/himalaya-mcp
claude plugin install email

himalaya-mcp doctor    # Verify installation

Claude Desktop (.mcpb -- one-click install)

Download himalaya-mcp-v{version}.mcpb from GitHub Releases and open it in Claude Desktop. Requires brew install himalaya separately -- the .mcpb does not bundle the himalaya CLI.

Claude Desktop (CLI setup)

himalaya-mcp setup

Development (from source)

npm install
npm run build
ln -s ~/projects/dev-tools/himalaya-mcp ~/.claude/plugins/himalaya-mcp

himalaya-mcp doctor    # Verify installation

Prerequisites

• himalaya CLI configured with at least one email account in ~/.config/himalaya/config.toml

• Node.js 22+ (installed automatically by Homebrew)

Testing

npm test              # 569 tests across 31 files (vitest)

Documentation

Full documentation at data-wise.github.io/himalaya-mcp

• Installation

• Quick Start

• Tutorials

• User Guide

• MCP Tools Reference

• Cheat Sheet

• CLI Reference

• Architecture

CLI man pages

The CLI ships with groff man pages following the flow-cli standard:

# After brew install himalaya-mcp, man pages are auto-installed to /opt/homebrew/share/man
man himalaya-mcp
man himalaya-mcp-doctor
man himalaya-mcp-setup
man himalaya-mcp-install-ext
man himalaya-mcp-remove-ext

# Or from the source repo:
MANPATH=$(pwd)/man man himalaya-mcp

Troubleshooting

If an email tool fails, ask Claude:

Run a health check on my email accounts.

This invokes the health_check MCP tool and surfaces a per-account status with one-line fix hints.

From a terminal, run:

himalaya-mcp doctor                    # All accounts
himalaya-mcp doctor --account <name>   # Single account

For the full failure-mode catalog and recovery steps, see docs/troubleshooting.md.

License

MIT