mail-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

mail-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from p-l-ta/mail-mcp. It costs 526 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of coding instructions for a local service that connects Claude Cowork to Apple Mail accounts. The service searches and reads mail through Spotlight and mail files, and performs actions such as sending, replying, flagging, and moving messages through AppleScript.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when developing or maintaining the mail service, including its TypeScript MCP server, mail search and parsing, AppleScript actions, input validation, and JSON-formatted tool responses.
Why use it?
It gives the coding agent the project’s architecture, file layout, conventions, and runtime permissions so changes fit the existing mail service.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md.

This is p-l-ta/mail-mcp's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on mail-mcp itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything mail-mcp configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to p-l-ta/mail-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p-l-ta/mail-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/p-l-ta/mail-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

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Per session 526 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 526 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00526 $0.00526
Opus 5 $0.00263 $0.00263
Sonnet 5 $0.00105 $0.00105
Haiku 4.5 $0.00053 $0.00053

Measured 8d ago against content hash 9b3b6d53a57c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

mail-mcp CLAUDE.md 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 8d 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.

CLAUDE.md · 54 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 54 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

mail-mcp

Local MCP server that exposes Mail.app to Claude Cowork, giving Cowork Gmail-connector-like behavior across all mail accounts configured in Mail.app (iCloud, Exchange, IMAP, etc.).

Architecture

  • Search & read: Spotlight (mdfind) + direct .emlx parsing with mailparser. Fast, structured, no AppleScript text-scraping.
  • Actions (send, reply, flag, move): AppleScript via osascript, run from temp script files (never inline strings — escaping is a footgun).
  • Transport: stdio. Claude Desktop bridges this into Cowork via its SDK layer.

Layout

  • src/server.ts — MCP server entry, tool registration
  • src/tools/ — one file per tool (search, read, send, reply, flags, etc.)
  • src/lib/applescript.ts — temp-file runner
  • src/lib/emlx.ts — Apple's emlx wrapper around RFC-822
  • src/lib/spotlight.ts — mdfind query builder
  • prototype.js — original single-file sketch, reference only

Conventions

  • TypeScript, ES modules, Node 20+
  • Zod schemas for every tool input
  • Tool outputs are JSON strings inside { type: "text" } content blocks
  • AppleScript is generated as full scripts written to tmp files, then executed with execFile("osascript", [path]). Never use osascript -e with template strings.
  • Every tool has a vitest unit test with mocked execFile / mdfind / fs

Permissions required at runtime

  • Automation → Mail.app (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation)
  • Full Disk Access for the node binary (to read ~/Library/Mail/)

Testing

  • npm test — vitest
  • npm run dev — tsx watch on src/server.ts (manual MCP testing via inspector)
  • Use npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/server.js for interactive testing

Out of scope

  • Gmail (Cowork already has a connector for that)
  • Remote/HTTP transport (this is a local stdio server bridged through Desktop)
  • Rendering HTML email bodies (return text/plain; expose HTML availability flag only)

Node version

This project requires Node 20+ (see .nvmrc). If using fnm: fnm use.

Read the full file on GitHub · 54 lines

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. 8d ago First seen · 54 lines · 526 tokens per session scan A 9b3b6d53a57c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mail-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository p-l-ta/mail-mcp (1 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 526 tokens to every session, about $0.0026 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 2026-08-31.

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