mail-index

mail-index downloads a preview of your whole inbox to your machine, then smartly fetches the full text of the messages that matter as you use it. That local index lets your AI agent run true summarization and recall over your entire mailbox — instead of being trapped behind Gmail's search bar.

It works through a local MCP server, so any agent (Claude, Codex, any MCP client) can query it. Local-first — the default index never leaves your machine. Operators who need an always-on connector can instead deploy the optional, single-tenant remote Worker Deployment in their own Cloudflare account; mail-index operates no hosting service. Read-only by default — it never sends or mutates your mail unless you explicitly opt into archive + label edits (a least-privilege gmail.modify re-auth; never send or delete). See ADR-0007.

<p align="center"> <a href="docs/demo/mcp-demo.html"> <img src="docs/demo/mcp-demo.gif" width="720" alt="Claude answering a vague inbox question through the mail-index MCP server, locally, with zero network calls" /> </a> <br /> _{Ask a vague question → one local MCP call → ranked, snippet-first answer. <a href="docs/demo/mcp-demo.html">Interactive version →</a>} </p>

Status: v1.0 — published. Progressive sync, the correspondence graph, the interest engine, curation, the full 23-tool MCP surface, and the write-back loops are built and tested — and mail-index is live on npm with a .mcpb bundle. Still in progress: the bundled Option A OAuth client and signed one-click installers. Architecture lives in docs/PLAN.md; start with docs/INSTALL.md.

[!TIP] New in v1.4 — opt-in mailbox writes + human-readable labels. mail-index can now archive a message and edit its labels directly on Gmail — via the archive / label CLI commands and the archive_message / modify_labels MCP tools, on both the gog and gws adapters. It stays read-only by default: writes are unreachable until you opt in with a least-privilege gmail.modify grant (never send or delete) — enable per account with mail-index setup --account <email> --enable-writes or the bundled scripts/enable-writes.sh. Labels now render as their human names everywhere (the index caches Gmail's label catalogue and resolves Label_3546… → "Expedition Insure" in both directions), and you can pass a friendly label name to label --add/--remove. The local-only / zero-egress guarantee is unchanged. See ADR-0007.

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How it works

1. Progressive sync — metadata for the whole mailbox in minutes; bodies fetched selectively.
2. Graph — contacts, domains, threads; centrality + communities over your human (non-bulk) mail.
3. Interest — an engagement score per contact from read/reply/star/importance signals. A seed for your curation, not an autonomous decision.
4. Curate — you (via your agent, or a CLI wizard) confirm who/what matters; that profile drives which bodies get fetched.
5. Query — your agent searches, traverses the graph, and reads the messages that matter, all locally via MCP.

<p align="center"> <a href="docs/demo/sync-flow.html"> <img src="docs/demo/sync-flow.gif" width="720" alt="mail-index prewarms a local SQLite index with the important messages, then the MCP server serves the agent from it, fetching from Gmail again only on a miss" /> </a> <br /> _{Important messages prewarm a local index; the MCP reads from it, touching Gmail again only when a needed body isn't there yet. <a href="docs/demo/sync-flow.html">Interactive version →</a>} </p>

Quick start

Requires Node 24+ and a Gmail MailSource adapter — gog (recommended) or gws. Reading Gmail needs a Google OAuth client, and you get one two ways: use the mail-index beta client (skip Google Cloud entirely; request access to join the ~100-user test list) or bring your own Google Cloud client (no cap, no request — we walk you through it). See docs/INSTALL.md §2 and docs/oauth-and-verification.md.

npm install -g mail-index                    # or: pnpm add -g mail-index

mail-index init                              # scaffold the config
# …connect a mailbox (own OAuth client, read-only) — see docs/INSTALL.md §2 / agent-install.md…
mail-index sync  --account personal --since 6mo
mail-index graph build --account personal
mail-index search "that contract we discussed"

(Prefer source? git clone …, pnpm install && pnpm build, then run the bins as node dist/cli/index.js ….)

Add to Claude

The MCP server registers in one step, but it still needs a mailbox connected first (see the walkthrough). A .mcpb/claude mcp add only adds the server — it doesn't install the adapter, sign you in, or sync.

• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport stdio mail-index -- npx -y -p mail-index mail-index-mcp (on Windows, prefix with cmd /c: … -- cmd /c npx -y -p mail-index mail-index-mcp — bare npx/.cmd won't spawn. See docs/INSTALL.md §7.)
• Any MCP client (manual):

  { "mcpServers": { "mail-index": { "command": "mail-index-mcp" } } }
  

• Claude Desktop: download the .mcpb bundle and double-click it (unsigned during beta — you may need to allow it in System Settings / Windows SmartScreen). The bundle is self-contained (ships its own dependencies, run by Claude Desktop's bundled Node — no npx, network, or system Node needed) so it installs identically on Windows/macOS/Linux. A signed all-in-one installer that also installs the adapter, signs you in, and syncs is still in progress; there is no claude:// install link.

Teach your agent the common moves. The MCP server already tells the agent when to reach for it (purchases, receipts, bookings, "who said what", "catch me up"), and the repo ships a Claude Agent Skill with the typical recipes (find purchases, catch up, find a contact's mail, summarize a sender). Drop it in for Claude Code/Desktop:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -R skills/mail-index ~/.claude/skills/

Full walkthrough (auth, curation, enrichment, scheduled sync, desktop-app gotchas) → docs/INSTALL.md. Driving setup with an agent → docs/agent-install.md.

What to expect — time & storage

The index keeps metadata for every message and full text only where it earns it, so it grows with message count, not mailbox size — about 1.5% of your Gmail. First sync runs ~50 messages/min (one-time, incremental after); search is instant. Start with --since 1mo for value in minutes, then expand. Sizing table & growth path → docs/INSTALL.md §9.

Why it's lighter than Gmail search

Stock Gmail-API MCPs are query-based lookup tools — exact query, a network round-trip per call, raw payloads dumped into the model's context. mail-index answers vague questions from a local recall index. Across a 100-question suite on a real mailbox it answered every question for 15× fewer tokens — and the gap widens exactly where a query-based MCP has no primitive at all: summarizing, relationships, and commitments.

<p align="center"> <a href="docs/COMPARISON.md"> <img src="docs/demo/savings-by-category.png" width="1000" alt="Token savings by category across 100 inbox questions, mail-index vs a stock Gmail-API MCP: Retrieval 3.0×, Logistics 4.9×, Scheduling 9.2×, Commitments 9.6×, Finance 13.0×, Account 20.3×, Relationship 24.7×, Summarize 32.8× — 15.3× overall." /> </a> </p>

Per-category tables, the read-one-message comparison, the tool-by-tool landscape, and how to reproduce it all → docs/COMPARISON.md.

Stack

TypeScript · node:sqlite (no native deps) · SQLite FTS5 · Graphology · @modelcontextprotocol/sdk. Node 24+. Pluggable MailSource adapters; ships two Gmail transports — gog (recommended) and Google's gws.

CLI

Two bins ship: mail-index (CLI) and mail-index-mcp (the stdio MCP server).

mail-index init                          Scaffold the operator config + data dir
mail-index sync    --account <a> [--since 30d|1mo] [--all] [--query <q>] [--limit N]
mail-index sync    --all-accounts        Sync every account by its policy presets
mail-index enrich  --account <a> [--profile | --rule direct|all] [--sender <s>] [--match <fts>] [--limit N]
mail-index graph   build [--account <a> | --all-accounts]
mail-index curate  [--account <a>]       Interactive curation wizard (no-agent fallback)
mail-index compact [--account <a>] [--now]   Demote summarized bulk bodies (ADR-0003)
mail-index search  <terms> [--account <a>] [--limit N] [--enrich]
mail-index show    <account:message-id>  Print a message (auto-enriches a meta row)
mail-index open    <account:message-id>  Print the provider web URL (no fetch)
mail-index archive <account:message-id>  Archive (drop INBOX) — opt-in write; needs gmail.modify
mail-index label   <account:message-id> [--add <l>]... [--remove <l>]...  Opt-in write; needs gmail.modify
mail-index status  [--json]              Per-account freshness + counts

Writes are off by default. Enable archive + label edits for an account with mail-index setup --account <email> --enable-writes (or the bundled scripts/enable-writes.sh <email>) — a least-privilege gmail.modify grant (never send or delete). See ADR-0007.

Documentation

• docs/INSTALL.md — generic onboarding (install, authenticate a MailSource, init, sync, curate, enrich, add the MCP server, scheduled-sync snippet).
• docs/MCP.md — the 18-tool MCP reference for agent integrators: args, compact result shapes, the index_as_of freshness + command-handback contracts.
• docs/ADAPTERS.md — the MailSource contract and how to write + contract-test a new adapter.
• docs/PLAN.md — architecture, data model, and the key decisions (ADR digest).
• SECURITY.md + docs/THREAT-MODEL.md — privacy posture, trust boundaries, prompt-injection stance, and a "verify our claims yourself" runbook. The local-only promise is enforced in CI by an egress guard test — the core (src/) makes no network calls; the one exception is the opt-out launch-shim self-updater (bin/selfupdate.mjs, throttled npm-version check, MAIL_INDEX_NO_AUTOUPDATE=1 to disable), audited by the same guard.

About

Built by Unsold Group — a travel & insurtech company building the groundwork to operate as an AI-native business: local-first, agent-native infrastructure that gives AI real, queryable context to work from. mail-index is one piece of that — giving agents durable memory of a mailbox without handing them the keys to it.

More: unsold.group/al

Project growth

Feedback & contact

There's no telemetry — we only know what you tell us, so feedback is genuinely welcome:

• 💬 Discussions — questions, ideas, how you use it
• 🐞 Report a bug · 💡 Request a feature
• 🔒 Security/privacy issues → SECURITY.md (private)
• 🌐 unsold.group/al

Inside your agent you can also just say "report a mail-index bug" — the MCP server points the agent to a GitHub link for you to submit (it never sends anything itself). See SUPPORT.md.

License

MIT