imap-smtp-email

What This Skill Does

The imap-smtp-email skill provides a robust interface for OpenClaw AI agents to manage email communication directly via IMAP and SMTP protocols. It enables your AI agent to act as a virtual assistant capable of monitoring, reading, searching, and sending professional emails without manual intervention. The skill handles authentication for major providers like Gmail, Outlook, and various 163-based domains, effectively allowing the agent to manage workflows involving inbound inquiries, automated responses, and attachment handling. By connecting to standard mail servers, the skill serves as a bridge for the agent to participate in email-driven business processes.

Installation

To integrate this skill, use the ClawHub command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/gzlicanyi/imap-smtp-email. Once installed, locate the skill folder and create a .env file to configure your credentials. You must define IMAP_HOST, IMAP_PORT, IMAP_USER, and IMAP_PASS for incoming mail, as well as SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, and SMTP_PASS for outgoing mail. Ensure that you have enabled IMAP/SMTP in your email provider's settings. For providers like Gmail, you must generate an 'App Password' as standard passwords will not be accepted due to security protocols.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for automating customer support ticketing, receiving notifications from system monitors, sending automated status reports, and archiving important correspondence. An agent can be instructed to 'check the inbox every hour for new invoices' and 'fetch the content of those emails to summarize them' or 'download attachments and save them to a specified directory.'

Example Prompts

1. "Check my inbox for unread emails from the last 2 hours and give me a summary of what they are about."
2. "Find the email from '[email protected]' with the subject 'Project Update', fetch its content, and tell me if there are any attachments I should download."
3. "Send an email to [email protected] with the subject 'Weekly Report' and attach the file located at ./reports/latest.pdf."

Tips & Limitations

Always use an 'App Password' where possible, as storing your primary account password is a significant security risk. Be mindful of the --recent flag when checking mail to avoid processing older messages unnecessarily. Note that while this skill can download attachments, it relies on system-level file access to save them locally, so ensure the agent has the necessary permissions. For high-security environments, verify that IMAP_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED is set to true to ensure encrypted connections.