ripmail

An email client designed for agents, not people.

Your mail lives on your machine, so search is fast. A small CLI your agent can use to read and handle email for you.

Simple binary install

About 2 MB, written in Rust. One install script—no Node, Python, or system packages to line up first.

Fast full-text search, locally

SQLite FTS5 on the same machine as your agent. Search your archive at full speed—nothing leaves your disk for indexing.

Your agent can run your mail

We designed our CLI to delight the agent: token efficient, fewer tool calls, 50ms search, attachments as Markdown.

`grep`, but for email.

Your coding agent doesn't eyeball entire source trees. And it certainly doesn't wait on a remote, sluggish, token-heavy MCP call that might miss anyway. It reaches for fast local CLI tools with structured output it can parse and act on.

ripmail is that for email: local FTS index, clean JSON, zero round-trips. Same rhythm as searching a codebase—just a different source tree.

Your email is a database

Messages land in a local index—not an infinite scroll. Lexical search, metadata filters, and threads you can address by ID. Have your agent understand your email like it understands code.

Search that actually works

Fast, accurate search on your machine—so your agent can find what matters and take action without trial and error. Low-latency enough to run in a loop from the tools you already use.

Smarter over time

Local search is the floor. Your agent can learn priorities—who matters, which threads to surface, what to deprioritize—so what you see bends toward signal the longer you use it.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirne/ripmail/main/install.sh | bash

Nightly build

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirne/ripmail/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --nightly

Setup

Interactive setup wizard for humans.

ripmail wizard

Or have your agent set it up.

ripmail setup

Agent skill (Claude Code)

Give Claude Code a built-in playbook for ripmail.

ripmail skill install

Examples

ripmail search "from:apple invoice OR receipt after:2025-01-01"
ripmail inbox

Or try this in your coding agent:

/ripmail summarize all purchase from apple this year
/ripmail brief me on my upcoming meeting with steve
/ripmail draft a reply for each outstanding item that needs action in today's inbox and let me review them

Or ask ripmail directly:

ripmail ask "who was that VC Peter introduced me to last week?"
ripmail ask "go through all my meeting transcripts from last week and summarize what my action items are"

Agent-first email means programmatic access is the primary interface. The goal is not another inbox—it's a local-first layer so your tools can read and write mail the same way they read a repo.

View on GitHub →