skulk-email

What This Skill Does

The skulk-email skill provides a robust solution for managing emails directly within your terminal or via an AI agent. It acts as an interface for DreamHost mailbox services, enabling users to read, search, and send emails. The standout feature of this tool is its ability to circumvent common VPS infrastructure limitations. Many cloud providers like DigitalOcean, Linode, or AWS block outbound SMTP traffic (ports 25, 465, and 587) to curb spam, making traditional mail clients useless. Skulk-email solves this by utilizing HTTPS (port 443) to interact with the DreamHost Roundcube webmail interface. By automating the web session flow, it allows your agent to send messages as if they were a human user in a browser, entirely bypassing restrictive network firewall policies.

Installation

To get started, ensure your environment has the core dependencies installed: python3, curl, and jq. First, install the skill via the OpenClaw repository using the command clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/adainthelab/skulk-email. Once installed, you must configure your credentials to authenticate with your mailbox. Run mkdir -p ~/.config/skulk-email && chmod 700 ~/.config/skulk-email to create a secure directory. Inside this directory, create a credentials.json file populated with your email and password. Finally, run chmod 600 ~/.config/skulk-email/credentials.json to lock down permissions, ensuring that only the local user can access your sensitive account data. Test your setup using bash scripts/skulk-email.sh test to verify successful connectivity.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for automated communication workflows. You might use it to send out daily status reports from an automated system, receive alerts from cron jobs, or manage shared support inboxes. The ability to integrate Gmail via IMAP also makes it a powerful tool for consolidating cross-platform inbox monitoring. It is particularly valuable for developers who need to integrate email capabilities into server environments that restrict standard mail protocols, or for autonomous agents tasked with monitoring project inquiries and responding to threads.

Example Prompts

1. "Check the unread count in my primary inbox and list the subjects of the last five messages."
2. "Search for the latest email from the support team regarding the server migration and summarize the content."
3. "Send a follow-up email to [email protected] with the subject 'Project Update' and body 'We have completed the initial deployment phase.'"

Tips & Limitations

Always ensure that your credentials.json file maintains strict file permissions; never commit this file to version control. While the tool is highly effective for bypassing SMTP blocks, it relies on the availability of the webmail interface; if DreamHost updates their Roundcube UI, the script logic may require adjustment. Additionally, this tool is designed for personal or low-to-medium volume automated use. Heavy-duty marketing campaigns or high-volume newsletters should still be handled via dedicated transactional mail APIs to ensure proper deliverability and bounce management.