IMAP mailbox MCP server

imap-mcp

<!-- badges: start -->

<!-- badges: end -->

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for any IMAP mailbox. It speaks IMAP rather than one vendor's API, so it works with whatever provider you already have.

Lets MCP clients like Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex read and search your mail, organise it into folders, save attachments and draft replies — with every message fenced as untrusted content, and the write tools off unless you turn them on.

Eleven tools, not fifty: a mail account is a workflow, not an API surface, so related operations are folded into one tool with a mode rather than split across many. And eleven is the ceiling, not the floor — IMAPALLOWTOOLS=essential registers a curated six instead, and under the read-only default that narrows to four. See choosing which tools load.

<!-- is resolved against the colour scheme of the page showing it, so GitHub picks the variant that matches its own theme toggle. npm strips and when it sanitises the README and keeps the , which is why that fallback carries its own dark card. The URLs are absolute because relative ones are simply invisible on the npm package page. -->

What makes it different

It cannot send mail. That is the feature. An agent with access to private data, exposure to untrusted content, and a channel to the outside world is exploitable by anyone who can put a message in the inbox — the pattern that produced EchoLeak, where one crafted email exfiltrated internal data from Microsoft 365 Copilot with no user interaction. This server has the first two and deliberately not the third. save_draft writes the reply into your Drafts folder; you send it from your own mail client. No amount of clever text in a message can make this server post anything anywhere.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.