Phase 8 / Ep 38: AgentMail —— Enabling Agents to Send and Receive Emails

🎯 Learning Objective: Configure the AgentMail MCP Server and implement email automation.

1. What is AgentMail?

AgentMail is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server, providing AI Agents with dedicated email addresses. Agents can send and receive emails just like humans—eliminating the need for manual forwarding.

graph LR
    Agent["🤖 Agent"] -->|"MCP Protocol"| AM["📧 AgentMail\nMCP Server"]
    AM -->|"SMTP/IMAP"| Email["📬 Email System"]
    Email --> Inbox["Inbox"]
    Email --> Sent["Sent"]

2. Installation and Configuration

# Install AgentMail
npx clawhub install agentmail

# Configure (requires AgentMail API Key)
openclaw config set mcp.agentmail.apiKey "am_xxx"
openclaw config set mcp.agentmail.email "[email protected]"

Alternatively, configure in openclaw.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "agentmail": {
        "command": "npx",
        "args": ["agentmail-mcp-server"],
        "env": {
          "AGENTMAIL_API_KEY": "${AGENTMAIL_API_KEY}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Email Operation Capabilities

After installation, the Agent gains the following tools:

4. Practical Scenarios

Scenario One: Automatic Daily Report Sending

sequenceDiagram
    actor User as 🧑 You
    participant TG as 📱 Telegram
    participant Agent as 🤖 Agent
    participant AM as 📧 AgentMail
    participant Boss as 📬 [email protected]

    User->>TG: "Send today's work daily report to my boss"
    TG->>Agent: Instruction received
    Agent->>Agent: Organize today's diary from memory/
    Agent->>Agent: Draft email body
    Agent->>AM: send_email(to: [email protected],\nsubject: "4/6 Work Daily Report",\nbody: "...")
    AM->>Boss: SMTP Send
    AM->>Agent: ✅ Sent successfully
    Agent->>TG: "✅ Daily report sent to [email protected]"

Scenario Two: Reading Emails to Extract Tasks

You: "Check the inbox, are there any new tasks?"

Agent (internal): read_emails(unread: true)
→ Found 3 new emails

Agent: "You have 3 new emails:
1. 📧 Alice (10:30) - Request to review PR #42
2. 📧 Bob (11:15) - Inquiry about API documentation link
3. 📧 Newsletter (12:00) - OpenClaw v3.1 Release Announcement

Which one do you need me to reply to?"

Scenario Three: Cron Automatic Reply

openclaw cron add "Email Check" --schedule "*/30 * * * *" \
  --action "Check inbox, generate reply drafts for new emails not tagged as 'newsletter', and notify me via Telegram for review"

5. Security Controls

{
  "mcp": {
    "agentmail": {
      "restrictions": {
        "allowedRecipients": ["*@company.com", "[email protected]"],
        "maxEmailsPerDay": 50,
        "requireApproval": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Next Episode Preview: Ep 39, A Tour of the MCP Ecosystem—Beyond AgentMail, there are four essential MCP Servers: Browser, Database, GitHub, and Calendar.