Apple mail

Apple Mail (Read Only)

Read email via Mail.app AppleScript. No sending or modifying emails.

Prerequisites

• Mail.app running and logged in
• Automation permissions granted (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation → Terminal/Claude Code → Mail)
• If first access attempt times out, ask user to check for macOS permission dialog

Reliability: always wrap osascript with timeout + retry

Apple Mail's AppleScript bridge hangs intermittently — sometimes for minutes — even on simple queries. The AppleScript-internal with timeout of N seconds does NOT kill a wedged osascript process. Always wrap calls with shell-level timeout and retry on failure.

Pattern:

# Run osascript with 15s shell timeout, retry up to 3 times with 2s backoff.
mail_query() {
  local script="$1" attempt
  for attempt in 1 2 3; do
    result=$(timeout 15 osascript -e "$script" 2>&1) && { echo "$result"; return 0; }
    sleep 2
  done
  echo "ERROR: Mail query failed after 3 attempts" >&2
  return 1
}

# Usage:
mail_query 'tell application "Mail" to count (messages of inbox whose read status is false)'

Reasonable defaults: 15s timeout, 3 retries, 2s sleep. Bump the timeout for messages of every mailbox (cross-account searches) to 60s. If all 3 retries fail, report the failure and move on — never block a briefing on Mail.

Account & Machine Context

See docs/email-accounts.md for which accounts are configured on which machines.

Commands

List accounts

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to get name of every account'

Count unread messages

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to count (messages of inbox whose read status is false)'

Recent inbox messages (last 10)

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail"
  set recentMsgs to messages 1 thru 10 of inbox
  repeat with msg in recentMsgs
    set msgInfo to "From: " & (sender of msg) & " | Subject: " & (subject of msg) & " | Date: " & (date sent of msg)
    log msgInfo
  end repeat
end tell'

Get message content by index

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail"
  set msg to message 1 of inbox
  return "From: " & (sender of msg) & "\nSubject: " & (subject of msg) & "\nDate: " & (date sent of msg) & "\n\n" & (content of msg)
end tell'

Search messages by subject

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail"
  set foundMsgs to (messages of inbox whose subject contains "keyword")
  count foundMsgs
end tell'

Search and read first match

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail"
  set foundMsgs to (messages of inbox whose subject contains "keyword")
  if (count foundMsgs) > 0 then
    set msg to item 1 of foundMsgs
    return "From: " & (sender of msg) & "\nSubject: " & (subject of msg) & "\nDate: " & (date sent of msg) & "\n\n" & (content of msg)
  else
    return "No messages found"
  end if
end tell'

Search across all mailboxes

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail"
  set foundMsgs to (messages of every mailbox of every account whose subject contains "keyword")
  -- Note: this can be slow across many accounts
end tell'

List mailboxes for an account

osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to get name of every mailbox of account "Gmail"'

Notes

• AppleScript messages of inbox returns a unified inbox across all accounts
• Messages are indexed newest-first (message 1 = most recent)
• content of msg returns plain text body; source of msg returns raw MIME
• Large mailboxes can be slow — use whose clauses to filter
• Timeout: use with timeout of 60 seconds for slow queries

Self-Improvement

If you encounter an AppleScript pattern that fails, a macOS behavior change, or missing guidance in this skill, don't just work around it — fix the skill:

1. Create a PR from a fresh worktree of https://github.com/eins78/agent-skills on a new branch, fixing the issue directly
2. Or file an issue on https://github.com/eins78/agent-skills with: what failed, the actual behavior, and the suggested fix

Never silently work around a skill gap. The fix benefits all future sessions.