imessage-read

imessage-read is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from benelser/imessage-tools. It costs 10 tokens per session (238 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool for reading recent Apple Messages conversations by contact, phone number, email address, or group chat.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to display recent messages from everyone, a named contact, or a named group chat.
Why use it?
It avoids manually searching Messages when you need a specific recent conversation or a chosen number of messages.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the imessage-tools plugin — 6 skills, 1 hook shipped together

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/benelser/imessage-tools/imessage-read
Any agent
npx skills add benelser/imessage-tools --skill imessage-read
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/benelser/imessage-tools

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install imessage-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 1 hook.

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.

agentmods badge for imessage-read

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/benelser/imessage-tools/imessage-read.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/benelser/imessage-tools/imessage-read)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/benelser/imessage-tools/imessage-read"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/benelser/imessage-tools/imessage-read.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 10 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 238 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 $0.00010 $0.00238
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00119
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00048
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00024

Measured 5d ago against content hash d96ea63449d0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

imessage-read 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 5d 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.

skills/imessage-read/SKILL.md · 29 lines

What it actually says

Read recent messages using imessage-tools.

imessage-tools read $ARGUMENTS

The CLI accepts:

  • read — last 20 messages (all contacts)
  • read <limit> — last N messages
  • read <limit> <contact> — last N messages from a specific phone/email
  • read --group "Group Name" — read messages from a named group chat
  • read --group "Group Name" <limit> — read N messages from a group

If the user provides a contact name instead of a number, first resolve it using the contacts command.

Examples:

  • /imessage-read — show last 20 messages
  • /imessage-read 5 — show last 5 messages
  • /imessage-read 10 +15551234567 — last 10 from a number
  • /imessage-read --group "Work Chat" — read group chat
  • /imessage-read --group "Family" 50 — last 50 from Family group

Show the output to the user.

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. 5d ago First seen · 29 lines · 10 tokens per session scan A d96ea63449d0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

imessage-read is a skill published in the GitHub repository benelser/imessage-tools (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 10 tokens to every session and 238 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

apple-notes

Use this skill when the user wants to interact with Apple Notes on macOS - creating, searching, reading, updating, deleting, organizing, or formatting notes and folders. This skill provides access to Apple Notes through MCP tools and includes safe formatting guidance.

sweetrb/apple-notes-mcp · 54 tokens

performance-patterns

Use when optimizing Apple Mail MCP operations, diagnosing slow queries, adding new filtering logic, or modifying how data is fetched from Mail.app. Covers osascript overhead, whose clause optimization, batch operation patterns, and known operation timings.

s-morgan-jeffries/apple-mail-fast-mcp · 50 tokens

integration-testing

Use when setting up, running, or debugging integration tests against real Apple Mail. Also use when unit tests pass but behavior seems wrong, when adding new AppleScript operations, or when you need to understand why mocked tests are insufficient for this project.

s-morgan-jeffries/apple-mail-fast-mcp · 52 tokens

api-design

Use BEFORE adding any new tool, parameter, or endpoint to the Apple Mail MCP server. Also use when considering API changes, evaluating feature requests, or when tempted to create a specialized operation. Contains the decision tree that prevents tool sprawl and the anti-pattern catalog.

s-morgan-jeffries/apple-mail-fast-mcp · 56 tokens

release

Use when the user wants to release a new version. Orchestrates the full release workflow including milestone check, version bump, changelog generation, validation, tagging, and PR creation. Also use when discussing release planning or version management.

s-morgan-jeffries/apple-mail-fast-mcp · 49 tokens

douyin-creator-scraping

Scrape video stats from the Douyin creator center (creator.douyin.com) using AppleScript to automate the user's logged-in Chrome. Covers the data-center/content page. Use when setting up periodic data collection, building a Douyin stats tracker, or automating export of video performance data.

TradingAi666/TzFilm-Douyin-Tool · 68 tokens