imsg

A command-line tool for managing iMessage and SMS conversations on macOS through the local Messages database. It can list chats, show history, watch for incoming messages, and send messages or attachments.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect conversations, search or review message history, monitor incoming messages, send texts, and exchange attachments from the terminal.
Why use it?
It lets terminal-based workflows work with messages without switching to the Messages app. Because it reads private message history, it may require macOS permissions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/trtmn/agent-plugins/imsg
Any agent
npx skills add trtmn/agent-plugins --skill imsg
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/trtmn/agent-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 118 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,355 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 $0.00118 $0.02355
Opus 5 $0.00059 $0.01177
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00471
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00235

Measured yesterday against content hash 92c9cb0f2678, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

imsg 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 yesterday.

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.

plugins/imsg/skills/imsg/SKILL.md · 254 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 254 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

imsg

The imsg command-line tool enables you to send and read iMessage and SMS messages directly from the terminal, query your Messages database, and watch for incoming messages.

⚠️ Important Privacy & Database Notes

  • Database Access: imsg reads from your local Messages database (~/Library/Messages/chat.db). This is a sensitive file containing your complete message history.
  • Permissions: macOS may prompt for permissions when accessing the Messages database. Terminal needs Full Disk Access on newer macOS versions.
  • Data Sensitivity: Be cautious when working with message history — it contains private conversations.
  • Database Locking: If Messages.app is open, the database may be locked. Close Messages.app if you encounter access issues.

Commands Overview

imsg has four main commands:

  1. chats — List your recent iMessage/SMS conversations
  2. history — Show message history for a specific chat
  3. watch — Stream incoming messages in real-time
  4. send — Send a message (text and/or attachment)
  5. rpc — Run JSON-RPC over stdin/stdout (advanced)

chats — List Conversations

List recent iMessage and SMS conversations from your Messages database.

Usage

imsg chats [options]

Options

  • --limit <number> — Number of chats to list (e.g., --limit 5)
  • --json or -j — Output as machine-readable JSON
  • --db <path> — Custom path to chat.db (defaults to ~/Library/Messages/chat.db)
  • -v, --verbose — Enable verbose logging
  • --log-level <level> — Set log level: trace|verbose|debug|info|warning|error|critical

Examples

# List 10 most recent conversations
imsg chats --limit 10

# List conversations as JSON (easier to parse)
imsg chats --limit 5 --json

# List all conversations (no limit)
imsg chats

history — Show Message History

Retrieve message history for a specific conversation. Requires a chat ID (which you get from imsg chats).

Usage

imsg history [options]

Read the full file on GitHub · 254 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. yesterday First seen · 254 lines · 118 tokens per session scan A 92c9cb0f2678

Subscribe to this mod's changes

imsg is a skill published in the GitHub repository trtmn/agent-plugins (2 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Unlicense. It adds 118 tokens to every session and 2,355 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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