Essentials
The email connector gives your flespi AI agent an email account of its own. The agent runs correspondence on your behalf — for example, contacts a device manufacturer's support and guides the communication through to resolution — and, with a full account, watches the inbox and wakes on incoming mail.
Setup
Connect the account in one of two variants:
- imap — a full IMAP/SMTP account: the agent sends, reads the mailbox, and reacts to incoming mail;
- smtp — a send-only SMTP account: mail leaves this address, nothing is received or read.
Configuration fields: the email address (also the login username and the From address of sent mail), the account password — an app password for providers with two-factor auth (e.g. Gmail) — the IMAP server (imap variant, e.g. imap.gmail.com) and SMTP server (e.g. smtp.gmail.com) as host or host:port, and an optional display name shown next to the From address. Connections always use TLS.
Working with the agent
The agent composes and sends plain-text mail: up to 32 recipients across To/Cc/Bcc and up to 10 attachments (10 MB each, 20 MB per message) taken from its file storage. Replies thread properly — the agent references the answered message and quotes the original beneath its reply.
On an imap account the agent also reads the mailbox on demand: searches folders, reads past correspondence, walks long threads, and fetches attachments — useful for history that predates the connector.
Incoming mail
With the imap variant, new mail in the inbox wakes the agent: the message text and attachments are delivered to it, and a reply can follow in the same thread. Only mail arriving after the connector is attached produces events, and only the inbox is watched — server-side filters that move mail to other folders keep it out of the agent's sight (it can still be asked to read those folders).
Obvious automated mail — delivery reports, out-of-office autoreplies, no-reply senders — is ignored: no reply, no action.
Approvals
Sending is controlled by the agent operations ACL through the email_send operation type. By default it executes automatically; switch the rule to "ask" to turn every outgoing email into an approval request — you review the recipients, subject, and body, and can edit them before approving. Reading the mailbox is never gated.
Good to know
- The From address is always the connected account — the agent cannot send as anyone else; only the display name decorates it.
- Sent mail cannot be recalled, and there is no delivery feedback beyond the server accepting the message.
- Outbound mail is plain text — no HTML composition.
- Incoming mail is treated as untrusted: the sender is judged by the From address alone, and a mail instructing the agent to change its configuration or reveal secrets is reported to you instead of obeyed.
- Providers that block password logins for third-party apps require an app password; without one the connection fails.