imessage

A terminal command for sending text messages or file attachments through Apple's Messages app. It can send to a chosen phone number or Apple ID, with a preset recipient if none is provided.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to send a text, PDF, Shortcut file, or another attachment from a Mac.
Why use it?
It lets you send messages and files from the command line, including attachments through a workaround needed on newer macOS versions.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/esaruoho/apple/imessage
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/esaruoho/apple
Per session 88 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 561 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00088 $0.00561
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00280
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00112
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00056

Measured 2d ago against content hash d68f7b4e0ca0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

imessage scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

commands/imessage.md · 50 lines

What it actually says

/imessage

Send an iMessage to yourself (or anyone) from the terminal — text or files.

/imessage "yo yo yo hi hi hi"
/imessage file.pdf
/imessage --text "see attached" file.pdf
/imessage --to +358401234567 "hello"
/imessage --to [email protected] ~/Downloads/foo.shortcut

Detection

  • If the positional argument is an existing file path → attach as file.
  • Otherwise → send as text.
  • Use --text or --file to force a mode explicitly.

Why files need a different path than text

tell application "Messages" to send (POSIX file "...") to buddy ... reliably no-ops on macOS Sequoia (the call succeeds but no attachment renders). The only working path is:

  1. Set the macOS clipboard to a file reference via Finder
  2. open imessage://<buddy> to focus that thread
  3. UI-script Cmd-V then Return via System Events

The CLI does all three transparently.

First-run setup

The first imessage <file> invocation triggers an Accessibility TCC prompt for the terminal app (Terminal, iTerm, or whatever your shell runs in). Accept it once — System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → add the terminal app. Subsequent calls are silent.

Default buddy

[email protected]. Override per-call with --to, or set IMESSAGE_TO in your shell profile.

Troubleshooting

  • "UI-script paste failed: AppleEvent timed out" — System Events is wedged. killall "System Events" to restart its daemon, retry.
  • File "sent" but no attachment — Messages's own Apple-Event handler was busy. Wait a few seconds and retry; the script has a with timeout guard so it won't hang forever.
  • Text-only sends fine, files fail — Accessibility permission missing for the terminal app.

Source: bin/imessage. See also: wiki/concepts/imessage-from-terminal.md.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 50 lines · 88 tokens per session scan A d68f7b4e0ca0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

imessage is a command published in the GitHub repository esaruoho/apple (11 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 561 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.