check-email

CLI Email (himalaya)

Manage email from the command line using himalaya with local Maildir sync via mbsync.

Accounts

Name	Provider	Usage
personal	Fastmail (default)	Personal email
oddball	Google Workspace	Work/VA email

The default account is personal. Use -a oddball for work email.

Prerequisites

himalaya must be installed and configured. If any command fails with "command not found", suggest running /setup-email.

Email is synced to local Maildir (~/Mail/) via mbsync + IMAP IDLE (near-instant). Himalaya reads from local Maildir — no network needed for reading.

Commands

List inbox (unread envelopes)

# Personal inbox (default)
himalaya envelope list

# Work inbox
himalaya envelope list -a oddball

# List a specific folder
himalaya envelope list -f Sent
himalaya envelope list -f "[Gmail]/Sent Mail" -a oddball

Read a message

# Read by ID (from envelope list output)
himalaya message read <id>

# Read from work account
himalaya message read <id> -a oddball

Mark as read

himalaya flag add <id> seen
himalaya flag add <id> seen -a oddball

Archive messages

Use the mail-archive script (not raw himalaya move) — it handles UID stripping for mbsync compatibility:

# Archive from personal (moves to Archive folder)
mail-archive <id> [id...]

# Archive from work/Gmail (moves to [Gmail]/All Mail)
mail-archive -a oddball <id> [id...]

Sync email manually

# Sync all accounts
mbsync -a

# Sync a single account
mbsync personal
mbsync work

# Full pipeline (sync + text extraction + search index update)
mail-sync -a

Search email

Use qmd for full-text search across all indexed email:

# Fast keyword search (BM25)
qmd search "quarterly report" -c email

# Semantic search with reranking (slower, more relevant results)
qmd query "emails about the server migration timeline" -c email -n 5

# Search across everything — email, wiki, notes
qmd query "meeting with Alex about deployment"

Send email

# Compose in editor
himalaya message write

# Quick send (pipe content)
echo "Message body" | himalaya message write --to "[email protected]" --subject "Subject"

Behavior

1. When the user says "check email" or "check my email", list both inboxes (personal first, then work) and summarize unread
2. Present unread messages in a clean, readable format — show sender, subject, and date
3. When reading messages, extract the key content and summarize if lengthy
4. Offer follow-up actions: archive, mark as read, reply
5. Use mail-archive for archiving (never use raw himalaya message move — it causes mbsync UID conflicts)
6. When searching, prefer qmd query for natural language queries and qmd search for specific keywords
7. If himalaya is not installed, suggest running /setup-email to set up the full email stack