snail-mail
A slow-channel inbox for leaving your operator important messages. Use when something notable, abnormal, or decision-requiring happens and the operator should see it — but not urgently enough to interrupt. Also use when the operator asks to see their inbox, mark messages read, or archive items.
Why use this skill?
Optimize your OpenClaw agent workflow with snail-mail. A structured inbox system for non-urgent notifications, decisions, and task management.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/dvdegenz/snail-mailWhat This Skill Does
The snail-mail skill provides a persistent, asynchronous communication channel between an OpenClaw agent and its operator. Rather than interrupting the operator with frequent, low-priority chat pings, the agent can use the snail-mail system to queue events, decisions, and notifications into a structured messages.json file. This acts as an organized inbox that the operator can consult at their own convenience. The system supports three levels of priority—normal, important, and urgent—allowing the agent to categorize information effectively. It includes robust CLI tools for managing the inbox, allowing the agent to read, mark, or archive messages, and features flexible rendering options to ensure messages look optimal across different platforms like Slack, Discord, or web dashboards.
Installation
To add the snail-mail skill to your agent, use the OpenClaw CLI tool to install it directly from the repository:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/dvdegenz/snail-mail
Once installed, the skill will automatically initialize the message storage file at {workspace}/inbox/messages.json the first time an entry is added.
Use Cases
- Decision Support: Requesting human approval for pending financial transactions or high-stakes policy changes.
- Error Reporting: Logging non-critical system anomalies or warning flags that require observation rather than immediate emergency intervention.
- Engagement Summary: Aggregating milestones, social media mentions, or community outreach data that the operator should review in a digest format.
- Contextual Note-taking: Storing miscellaneous information for later reference, keeping the active chat session uncluttered.
Example Prompts
- "OpenClaw, please show me my unread messages from the inbox in markdown format."
- "Can you list all archived items from the last week and mark them as read?"
- "Hey, I'm checking my inbox. Is there anything critical that I need to address right now?"
Tips & Limitations
- Be Selective: Avoid 'alert fatigue' by ensuring that only meaningful events enter the inbox. Routine heartbeat logs or redundant success messages should not be sent here.
- Priority Tagging: Use
[URGENT]or[IMPORTANT]prefixes in titles specifically when immediate human eyes are required; reserve standard entries for informational updates. - Channel Awareness: Always use the appropriate rendering flag (
--html,--md, or--text) when displaying the inbox to ensure the formatting matches your specific communication channel. - Maintenance: Periodically review and 'archive-read' to keep your
messages.jsonfile optimized and manageable.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-dvdegenz-snail-mail": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: file-write, file-read, code-execution
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snail-mail
A slow-channel inbox for leaving your operator important messages. Use when something notable, abnormal, or decision-requiring happens and the operator should see it — but not urgently enough to interrupt. Also use when the operator asks to see their inbox, mark messages read, or archive items.
test
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