mail-use CLI

CLI-first email management for multi-account IMAP/SMTP with a local sync cache.

Primary interface: the mail-use CLI (Node.js implementation). Ships prebuilt platform binaries — no Python, no Node required for end users.

Renamed from Mailbox to mail-use. The command is now mail-use; mailbox still works as an alias, and your config in ~/.config/mailbox is untouched.

Supported Providers

• 163 Mail (mail.163.com / mail.126.com)

• QQ Mail (mail.qq.com)

• Gmail (mail.google.com)

• Outlook/Hotmail

• Custom IMAP servers

Install

One line, no npm, no Node

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leeguooooo/mail-use/main/install.sh | sh
mail-use --help

Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform (macOS arm64/x64, Linux x64) from the latest GitHub Release, verifies its checksum, and installs to ~/.local/bin. Pin a version with MAIL_USE_VERSION=v2.11.2, or change the dir with MAIL_USE_INSTALL_DIR=....

The installer also drops a mailbox symlink next to it, so scripts written against the old name keep working.

There is no npm package. Distribution is GitHub Release binaries only — that keeps releases free of NPM_TOKEN and 2FA prompts, and keeps install free of a Node toolchain. The pre-rename @leeguoo/mailbox-cli packages on npm are frozen and no longer updated.

As an AI Skill (Claude Code / Cursor / etc.)

# Project scope — installs into ./.claude/skills/mail-use (or ./.cursor/skills/...):
npx skills add leeguooooo/mail-use --skill mail-use

# User scope — installs into ~/.claude/skills/mail-use:
npx skills add leeguooooo/mail-use --skill mail-use -g

The skill assumes the CLI is on PATH (install via the curl … install.sh | sh above). For the biggest speedup also run mail-use daemon install once.

MCP server (Claude Desktop / Code / Cursor)

mail-use mcp config --json   # prints a paste-ready mcpServers entry

From source (development)

pnpm install
pnpm test

# build a local platform binary into dist/mail-use
pnpm build:binary

If a test run is interrupted (editor task killed, agent session closed), its Vitest workers can be left behind and hold memory. Check with pgrep -fl vitest and kill what remains.

Configure accounts

mkdir -p ~/.config/mailbox
cp examples/accounts.example.json ~/.config/mailbox/auth.json

Config locations:

• Credentials: ~/.config/mailbox/auth.json

• Other settings: ~/.config/mailbox/config.toml

Common commands

# CLI help
mail-use --help

# list accounts
mail-use account list --json

# list unread emails (cache by default; --from filters cache-side)
mail-use email list --unread-only --limit 20 --json
mail-use email list --account-id my_account_id --from "newsletter" --json

# show one email (response includes list_unsubscribe when the header is set)
mail-use email show 123456 --account-id my_account_id --json

# mark read (use --dry-run to validate first)
mail-use email mark 123456 --read --account-id my_account_id --folder INBOX --dry-run --json
mail-use email mark 123456 --read --account-id my_account_id --folder INBOX --confirm --json

# delete
mail-use email delete 123456 --account-id my_account_id --folder INBOX --confirm --json

# bulk mutate by sender or subject (no UID list needed)
mail-use email mark --from "support@npmjs.com" --read --confirm --account-id my_account_id --json
mail-use email delete --from "newsletter" --account-id my_account_id --json    # dry-run preview
mail-use email delete --subject "[ad]" --account-id my_account_id --confirm --json

Cache + sync

• Cache DB default: ~/.local/share/mailbox/email_sync.db

• Listing uses cache by default where possible. Add --live to force IMAP.

mail-use sync status --json
mail-use sync force --json
mail-use sync init
mail-use sync daemon

AI usage guide

If you're integrating this CLI into an AI agent, start here:

• docs/AI_SKILL_MAIL_USE.md

OpenClaw integration

This repo includes an OpenClaw skill at skills/mail-use/SKILL.md.

OpenClaw loads skills from:

• <workspace>/skills

• ~/.openclaw/skills

Quick link helper (symlink into ~/.openclaw/skills):

./scripts/link_openclaw_skill.sh

Force replace an existing link:

./scripts/link_openclaw_skill.sh --force

To use this repo without copying files, add the repo skills directory to skills.load.extraDirs in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

{
  "skills": {
    "load": {
      "extraDirs": [
        "/path/to/mcp-email-service/skills"
      ]
    }
  }
}

OpenClaw handles channel delivery and scheduling; mail-use returns structured JSON outputs and optional text summaries.

Verify OpenClaw picked up the skill:

openclaw skills list --eligible
openclaw skills check

The *-use family

Small, composable CLIs that give an AI agent hands on one real thing. Same shape everywhere: curl … install.sh | sh to install, npx skills add leeguooooo/<name> to teach your agent, JSON on stdout.

Contract

• docs/CLI_JSON_CONTRACT.md

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