Email Bot That Answers in the Thread

medium15 minemail-bot.ts

You want an agent that answers mail sent to a mailbox, as a reply in the same thread, without answering spoofed senders or auto-replies.

What it shows

Run a Gateway with emailChannel(): IMAP with IDLE reads new mail, SMTP sends the answers
Answers keep the thread: Re: subject, In-Reply-To and References, and every email thread is a conversation of its own
The agent reads the new text only, without quoted history and signatures, as HTML rendered from its Markdown goes out
Only allowFrom reaches the agent, and mail whose DKIM, SPF or DMARC results fail for the sender domain is dropped
Auto-replies, bounces, bulk mail and its own mail are skipped, so it never loops with another bot

The code

email-bot.ts

import { Agent, Cogitator } from '@cogitator-ai/core';
import { Gateway, emailChannel } from '@cogitator-ai/channels';

const address = process.env.EMAIL_ADDRESS;
const password = process.env.EMAIL_PASSWORD;
const apiKey = process.env.GOOGLE_API_KEY;
if (!address || !password || !apiKey) {
  throw new Error('Set EMAIL_ADDRESS, EMAIL_PASSWORD and GOOGLE_API_KEY');
}

const email = emailChannel({
  address,
  name: 'Acme Assistant',
  allowFrom: ['acme.com'],
  imap: { host: 'imap.gmail.com', auth: { user: address, pass: password } },
  smtp: { host: 'smtp.gmail.com', port: 587, auth: { user: address, pass: password } },
});

const agent = new Agent({
  name: 'email-assistant',
  model: 'google/gemini-3.5-flash-lite',
  instructions: 'You answer email for the Acme team. Be friendly and brief.',
});

const cogitator = new Cogitator({
  llm: { providers: { google: { apiKey } } },
  memory: { adapter: 'memory' },
});
const memory = await cogitator.getMemory();

const gateway = new Gateway({
  agent,
  cogitator,
  channels: [email],
  ...(memory && { memory }),
});

await gateway.start();
console.log(`${address} answers mail from acme.com`);

Run it

install · bash

pnpm add @cogitator-ai/core @cogitator-ai/channels imapflow postal-mime nodemailer

EnvironmentEMAIL_ADDRESSEMAIL_PASSWORDGOOGLE_API_KEY

run · bash

npx tsx email-bot.ts

Or run the full example from a clone of the repository (keys in .env):

repository · bash

npx tsx examples/channels/07-email-bot.ts

Email Bot That Answers in the Thread

What it shows

The code

Run it

Learn more