imap-email

What This Skill Does

The imap-email skill enables the OpenClaw AI agent to interface directly with any standard IMAP email server. This includes personal accounts like Gmail as well as encrypted services via the ProtonMail Bridge. The skill provides capabilities to list incoming messages, fetch full email bodies (including HTML content), perform complex searches based on sender or temporal metadata, and manage email status by marking messages as read or unread. By acting as an intermediary, it allows the AI to handle email triaging, notification monitoring, and automated data extraction from correspondence directly within the local environment.

Installation

Installation is handled through the OpenClaw package manager. Run the command clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/mvarrieur/imap-email in your project terminal. After installation, navigate to the skill directory to perform the initial configuration. For ProtonMail users, the provided ./setup.sh script automates the credential linking process. For other providers, populate the .env file manually using the .env.example template. Ensure that your IMAP host, port, and authentication credentials are provided to prevent connection errors. Once configured, you can verify connectivity by running a simple check command.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for users who want to automate their inbox management. Common use cases include: filtering high-priority emails from a cluttered inbox for daily summaries, automatically fetching and parsing automated invoices or verification codes, monitoring specific support inboxes for urgent client inquiries, and creating a "read-later" system where the agent periodically aggregates unread newsletters. Developers can leverage the CLI commands to integrate email data into larger automation workflows or notification systems.

Example Prompts

1. "OpenClaw, check my inbox for any unread messages from my bank sent in the last 2 hours and summarize the subject lines."
2. "Can you fetch the latest email from [email protected] and tell me if they provided a tracking number?"
3. "Mark all unread emails in my INBOX from last week as read to clear my notifications."

Tips & Limitations

To ensure security, keep your .env file outside of your version control systems. When using Gmail, ensure that you are either using an App Password or have configured appropriate OAuth permissions if required by your security policy. Be aware that the search command is bound by the constraints of the IMAP protocol; complex filtering is supported but performance may vary depending on the size of your mailbox. Always verify that your connection settings, especially the IMAP_TLS and REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED flags, match your provider's security requirements.