mail-mcp

Built on davidvornholt/standards.

A draft-only IMAP helper for Thunderbird workflows, exposed to Codex, Claude, and other compatible clients as an MCP server and to you as a mail CLI over one shared Effect core. Through the MCP server it can search and read mail and received attachments, and create, update, or delete drafts with HTML and attachments; the mail CLI covers login, status, folder/search/read, and plain-text draft creation. It cannot send emails: drafts sync into Thunderbird for review and sending.

Layout

apps/mail            the application (MCP server + CLI)
  src/app            entrypoints: server.ts (MCP, stdio), cli.ts (the `mail` bin)
  src/features/mail  schemas, tagged errors, and Effect services (config, secrets, status, IMAP, draft, login)
  src/shared         app-local infrastructure (arg parsing, hidden-input terminal prompt)
packages/*           canonical shared config synced from the standards template

See apps/mail/README.md for the tool list, configuration, and secret handling.

Related MCP server: imap-mcp

Setup

bun install

# put the `mail` command on your PATH (one-time; links the app's bin into
# ~/.bun/bin). After this, run `mail …` from anywhere.
bun link --cwd apps/mail

# configure your accounts (non-secret: addresses, IMAP hosts, and ports). The real
# file is git-ignored so your addresses never land in git.
cp apps/mail/accounts.example.toml apps/mail/accounts.toml
# …edit apps/mail/accounts.toml…

# verify each account's password against IMAP, then store it in the OS keyring
# (hidden prompt — nothing is echoed or written to disk). Run this yourself;
# the secret never leaves your machine.
mail login you@example.com

# confirm each account authenticates cleanly (or shows what still needs a login)
mail status

Register the MCP server with Codex:

codex mcp add mail -- bun run <repo>/apps/mail/src/app/server.ts
codex mcp get mail

Codex defers MCP tool definitions until they are relevant, so registering the server does not eagerly add every mail tool schema to the model context. Restart Codex after adding it, then use /mcp to inspect the connected server.

For explicit write approvals and more headroom for IMAP operations, edit the generated entry in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.mail]
command = "bun"
args = ["run", "<repo>/apps/mail/src/app/server.ts"]
startup_timeout_sec = 15
tool_timeout_sec = 120
default_tools_approval_mode = "writes"

[mcp_servers.mail.tools.delete_draft]
approval_mode = "prompt"

For Claude Code (user scope), use:

claude mcp add --scope user mail -- bun run <repo>/apps/mail/src/app/server.ts

Once a password is stored, ask your MCP client to search your mail or compose a draft. You can also drive the review-first CLI yourself:

mail search invoice
mail search --account you@example.com invoice

Omitting --account searches every configured account, merges and deduplicates the results, and applies the limit globally. Pass --account <email> to search only that account. Each result includes its account handle, and failures from individual accounts are reported alongside partial results. If every account fails, the command fails with all account errors.

Folder searches are account-specific: use mail search --account you@example.com --scope folder --folder INBOX ... for one exact folder or --scope subtree --folder Projects for a folder and its descendants.

Not ready to link a global command? Every example also works as bun run apps/mail/src/app/cli.ts <args>.

Requirements

• Bun (see packageManager in package.json).

• A running, unlocked Secret Service provider (gnome-keyring) for the OS keyring.

Quality gate

bun run check runs the standards drift check, then lint, type-check, tests, build, and a11y across every workspace. It must pass before a change is done.