AI-powered email agent that syncs your emails via IMAP

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An AI-powered email agent that syncs your emails via IMAP and provides intelligent analysis using OpenAI, Anthropic, or local Ollama.

🔄 IMAP Sync- Mirror your email account locally with batch syncing👁️ IDLE Support- Real-time email detection (when server supports it)🤖 AI Analysis- Summarize, categorize, and extract insights from emails📤 SMTP Send- Send replies generated by AI🔍 Search- Full-text search across all synced emails📦 Local Storage- Emails stored as JSON, easy to inspect and backup🔧 Configurable- Works with Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP server

Go 1.21 or higher
An email account with IMAP access enabled
(Optional) AI API key for smart features

git clone https://github.com/peterretief/emailai.git
cd emailai

go build -o emailai .

go install github.com/peterretief/emailai@latest
cp config.example.json config.json

nano config.json

Enable 2-Step Verification at https://myaccount.google.com/security - Generate an App Password at https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords - Use the 16-character app password (not your regular password)

{
  "imap": {
    "host": "imap.gmail.com",
    "port": 993,
    "username": "you@gmail.com",
    "password": "your-app-password",
    "tls": true
  },
  "smtp": {
    "host": "smtp.gmail.com",
    "port": 587,
    "username": "you@gmail.com",
    "password": "your-app-password",
    "tls": true
  }
}

Choose one of the supported AI providers:

OpenAI:

{
  "ai": {
    "enabled": true,
    "provider": "openai",
    "api_key": "sk-your-key-here",
    "model": "gpt-4"
  }
}

Anthropic:

{
  "ai": {
    "enabled": true,
    "provider": "anthropic",
    "api_key": "sk-ant-your-key-here",
    "model": "claude-3-opus-20240229"
  }
}

Ollama (Local, free):

Install Ollama from https://ollama.com, then pull a local model:

ollama pull llama3.1:8b

Make sure the Ollama server is running:

ollama serve

Configure EmailAI to use the local model:

{
  "ai": {
    "enabled": true,
    "provider": "ollama",
    "api_key": "",
    "model": "llama3.1:8b",
    "max_tokens": 2048
  }
}

Good free local model choices include llama3.1:8b

, qwen2.5:7b

, and mistral:7b

. For email analysis and structured extraction, qwen2.5:7b

is also worth trying:

ollama pull qwen2.5:7b

Then set ai.model

to qwen2.5:7b

.

./emailai -action sync

./emailai -action sync -folder INBOX

./emailai -action sync -full-sync

./emailai -action serve

./emailai -action analyze -query "meeting"

./emailai -action contacts -limit 100

./emailai -action stats

./emailai -action search -folder INBOX -query "driver licence"

./emailai -action search -folder INBOX -attach jpg -query "driver licence"

./emailai -action send

For large Gmail mailboxes, increase the batch size in config.json

so each sync run imports more messages:

{
  "sync": {
    "maildir_path": "",
    "store_path": "./emails",
    "max_batch_size": 1000
  }
}

Run sync repeatedly until each folder is up to date:

while ./emailai -action sync; do sleep 10; done

Press Ctrl+C

to stop the loop.

emailai/
├── main.go              # Entry point and CLI
├── config/
│   └── config.go        # Configuration management
├── sync/
│   └── sync.go          # IMAP sync engine
├── store/
│   └── store.go         # Local email storage
├── ai/
│   └── ai.go            # AI processing (OpenAI/Anthropic/Ollama)
├── smtp/
│   └── smtp.go          # Email sending
├── config.example.json  # Example configuration
└── README.md

Option	Description	Default
`imap.host`
IMAP server hostname	`imap.gmail.com`
`imap.port`
IMAP server port	`993`
`imap.username`
Email address	-
`imap.password`
App password	-
`imap.tls`
Use TLS encryption	`true`
`smtp.host`
SMTP server hostname	`smtp.gmail.com`
`smtp.port`
SMTP server port	`587`
`ai.enabled`
Enable AI features	`false`
`ai.provider`
AI provider (`openai` , `anthropic` , `ollama` )
`openai`
`ai.model`
Model to use	`gpt-4`
`sync.interval`
Sync interval in seconds	`300`
`sync.folders`
Folders to sync (empty = all)	`[]`
`sync.max_batch_size`
Max emails per sync batch	`100`
`sync.store_path`
Local storage path	`./emails`
`sync.timeout_seconds`
Maximum time for one IMAP command	`120`
`sync.maildir_path`
Local Maildir root managed by mbsync/isync	empty
`filters.exclude_newsletters`
Exclude matching newsletter/marketing emails from local search and analyze results	`false`
`filters.exclude_from`
Sender substrings to exclude when newsletter filtering is enabled	newsletter/no-reply/etc.
`filters.exclude_subject`
Subject substrings to exclude when newsletter filtering is enabled	newsletter/digest/etc.
`filters.exclude_body`
Body substrings to exclude when newsletter filtering is enabled	unsubscribe/etc.
`ocr.enabled`
Run local OCR on image attachments	`false`
`ocr.command`
OCR executable	`tesseract`
`ocr.languages`
Tesseract language list	`eng`
`ocr.timeout_seconds`
Maximum OCR runtime per image	`60`
`ocr.max_bytes`
Maximum image size sent to OCR	`10485760`

When ocr.enabled

is true, image attachments are processed locally with Tesseract during sync. Extracted text is stored in the local email JSON and included in search. Attachment image bytes are not stored by the OCR feature.

Normal syncs store a per-folder IMAP UID watermark and fetch only newer messages. Use -full-sync

to rescan every message, for example after enabling OCR or changing message parsing.

Set filters.exclude_newsletters

to true

to keep obvious newsletters, promotions, and automated bulk mail out of search

and analyze

results. Tune the exclude_from

, exclude_subject

, and exclude_body

lists for your mailbox.

To use mbsync

/isync

for mailbox synchronization, set sync.maildir_path

to the Maildir root. When this is configured, the application reads local Maildir files and does not connect to IMAP. Run mbsync

first, then run ./emailai -action sync

to import new messages and process OCR.

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Fork the repository
Create your feature branch ( git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature

) - Commit your changes ( git commit -m 'Add amazing feature'

) - Push to the branch ( git push origin feature/amazing-feature

) - Open a Pull Request

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Never commit your config.json

file (it's in.gitignore

) - Use App Passwords, not your regular email password

Keep your AI API keys secure
The emails/

directory contains your synced emails - treat it as sensitive data

go-imap- IMAP library for Gogo-imap-idle- IDLE extensiongo-message- Email message parsing

If you have any questions or issues, please open an issue on GitHub.

source & further reading

github.com — original article Veryfront Code, the first full-stack AI framework Reconstructing the benchmark behind Luc Julia's 64% LLM reliability claim Someone just published open knowledge base

AI-powered email agent that syncs your emails via IMAP

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