Instructions for using the imsg command-line tool to read and send iMessage or SMS messages through Apple's Messages app on macOS. It requires Messages to be signed in and several permissions to be granted.

Use it to read conversations or send individual messages to phone numbers or Apple IDs through Messages.app; it does not support group management or bulk messaging.

It provides a direct way for scripts or an agent to work with Messages conversations while defining prerequisites and limits. It distinguishes one-off messaging from a persistent gateway connection.

imessage — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by AtlasOmnia: Instructions for using the imsg command-line tool to read…

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 skills/atlasomnia/hermes-custom-pack/imessage

Any agent

npx skills add AtlasOmnia/hermes-custom-pack --skill imessage

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AtlasOmnia/hermes-custom-pack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/atlasomnia/hermes-custom-pack/imessage.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/atlasomnia/hermes-custom-pack/imessage)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/atlasomnia/hermes-custom-pack/imessage"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/atlasomnia/hermes-custom-pack/imessage.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 849 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00022	$0.00849
Opus 5	$0.00011	$0.00425
Sonnet 5	$0.00004	$0.00170
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00085

Measured 6d ago against content hash 17a56c9de187, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, 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 6d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to imessage — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/imessage/SKILL.md · 118 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 118 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

iMessage

Use imsg to read and send iMessage/SMS via macOS Messages.app.

Prerequisites

macOS with Messages.app signed in
Install: brew install steipete/tap/imsg
Grant Full Disk Access for terminal (System Settings → Privacy → Full Disk Access)
Grant Automation permission for Messages.app when prompted

When to Use

User asks to send an iMessage or text message
Reading iMessage conversation history
Checking recent Messages.app chats
Sending to phone numbers or Apple IDs
Evaluating iMessage bridge/privacy options for Hermes; see before recommending Photon/Spectrum Cloud

When NOT to Use

Telegram/Discord/Slack/WhatsApp messages → use the appropriate gateway channel
Hermes iMessage gateway integration (live bidirectional channel) → that's the BlueBubbles platform adapter in the Hermes gateway. The imsg CLI here is for one-off scripting, not persistent gateway connections.
Group chat management (adding/removing members) → not supported
Bulk/mass messaging → always confirm with user first
Sensitive/private conversations over third-party iMessage cloud bridges unless retention, logging, employee-access, attachment-cache, and training-use guarantees are verified first

Privacy Notes

Prefer local Mac-backed Messages.app/imsg workflows for maximum privacy: content stays on the Mac and uses the user's own Messages account.
Photon/Spectrum iMessage Cloud is a portability bridge, not an end-to-end-private-from-Photon path. Treat it as a trusted third-party message processor unless Photon provides zero-retention/self-hosted guarantees.
For platform privacy details and due-diligence questions,

Quick Reference

List Chats

imsg chats --limit 10 --json

View History

# By chat ID
imsg history --chat-id 1 --limit 20 --json

# With attachments info
imsg history --chat-id 1 --limit 20 --attachments --json

Send Messages

# Text only
imsg send --to "+14155551212" --text "Hello!"

# With attachment
imsg send --to "+14155551212" --text "Check this out" --file /path/to/image.jpg

# Force iMessage or SMS
imsg send --to "+14155551212" --text "Hi" --service imessage
imsg send --to "+14155551212" --text "Hi" --service sms

Read the full file on GitHub · 118 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.

6d ago First seen · 118 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 17a56c9de187

Subscribe to this mod's changes

imessage is a skill published in the GitHub repository AtlasOmnia/hermes-custom-pack (56 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 849 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to imessage, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

ai-agents automation hermes-agent obsidian plugins skills

imessage

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade A, and why

Nothing flagged

This is a copy

How it starts

iMessage

Prerequisites

When to Use

When NOT to Use

Privacy Notes

Quick Reference

List Chats

View History

Send Messages

What this file has done since we first saw it

Other skills, from other repositories

config

obshare-cli

permission

upload

delete

list