Email (IMAP/SMTP)
lynox connects to any email account that supports IMAP and SMTP. Gmail and iCloud are production-tested on every release; Fastmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other IMAP-compatible servers are wired via the same auto-configuration table — they should work but haven’t been exercised on the release smoke. lynox handles triage, search, reading, sending, and follow-up tracking.
This is a standalone integration that works with any LLM provider. It’s separate from the Google Workspace Gmail integration (which uses OAuth).
Via Web UI (recommended)
Section titled “Via Web UI (recommended)”Go to Settings → Integrations → Mail. Click Add Account and:
- Select your email provider (or “Custom” for any IMAP/SMTP server)
- Enter your email address — lynox auto-discovers server settings for known providers
- Generate an app password (required for Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, Yahoo — links provided in the UI)
- Choose an account type (personal, business, support, etc.)
- Test the connection
App passwords
Section titled “App passwords”Most providers require an app-specific password instead of your regular login. This is a security feature — the app password grants only mail access, not full account access.
| Provider | 2FA required | Where to generate |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | Yes | Google Account → App Passwords |
| iCloud | Yes | Apple ID → App-Specific Passwords |
| Fastmail | Recommended | Settings → Security → App Passwords |
| Yahoo | Yes | Account Security → App Passwords |
| Outlook | Yes | Microsoft Account → App Passwords |
| Custom | Varies | Check your provider’s documentation |
Supported Providers
Section titled “Supported Providers”| Provider | IMAP | SMTP | Auto-configured | Release-smoke tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | imap.gmail.com:993 | smtp.gmail.com:587 | Yes | Yes |
| iCloud | imap.mail.me.com:993 | smtp.mail.me.com:587 | Yes | Yes |
| Fastmail | imap.fastmail.com:993 | smtp.fastmail.com:587 | Yes | No |
| Yahoo | imap.mail.yahoo.com:993 | smtp.mail.yahoo.com:587 | Yes | No |
| Outlook | outlook.office365.com:993 | smtp-mail.outlook.com:587 | Yes | No |
| Custom | Your server | Your server | Autodiscover via Thunderbird ISPDB | No |
For custom servers, lynox tries autodiscovery first (using Mozilla’s ISPDB). If that fails, enter host, port, and TLS settings manually.
Account Types
Section titled “Account Types”Each account has a type that controls how lynox interacts with it — tone, send permissions, and auto-reply behavior.
Send-capable types
Section titled “Send-capable types”| Type | Tone | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
personal |
Casual, warm, first-person | Full agent capability |
business |
Professional, direct | Draft-first (never auto-send) |
support |
Short, polite, action-oriented | Acknowledge issue + state next steps |
sales |
Warm professional, benefit-led | References CRM touchpoints |
hello |
Friendly, brief | First contact with prospects |
Receive-only types
Section titled “Receive-only types”These types cannot send — lynox only reads and triages incoming mail.
| Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
info |
General information inbox |
newsletter |
Subscriptions and digests |
notifications |
Automated system alerts |
abuse |
Abuse reports (compliance) |
privacy |
Privacy requests (compliance) |
security |
Security reports (compliance) |
legal |
Legal notices (compliance) |
Compliance types (abuse, privacy, security, legal) always escalate to you — lynox never auto-responds to these.
What You Can Do
Section titled “What You Can Do”Triage
Section titled “Triage”- “What’s new in my inbox?”
- “Triage my unread emails”
- “Show me anything important from today”
lynox filters noise automatically (newsletters, no-reply senders, List-Unsubscribe headers) and groups messages by thread.
Search
Section titled “Search”- “Find emails from Sarah about the Q1 report”
- “Show me flagged emails from last week”
- “Search for invoices with attachments”
Searches across all configured accounts by default, or specify one: “Search my support inbox for refund requests”.
- “Read the latest email from [name]”
- “Show me the full thread about [topic]”
Send & Reply
Section titled “Send & Reply”- “Draft a reply to the contract email”
- “Send a follow-up to Sarah about the proposal”
- “Reply all to the team update”
Follow-Up Tracking
Section titled “Follow-Up Tracking”- “Track this — I’m expecting a reply by Friday”
- “Remind me if Sarah doesn’t respond within 3 days”
lynox tracks follow-ups and reminds you when expected replies don’t arrive. Follow-ups can be created automatically when sending, or manually for any message.
Multi-Account
Section titled “Multi-Account”lynox supports multiple email accounts simultaneously. Each account has its own type, persona, and credentials.
- Triage and search fan out across all accounts when no specific account is named
- Smart reply-from — when replying, lynox automatically selects the sending account if one of the original recipients matches a registered account
- Default account — the first account added becomes the default for sending
Security
Section titled “Security”Credentials
Section titled “Credentials”- App passwords stored AES-256-GCM encrypted in the lynox vault
- Credentials are never cached in memory — re-read from vault on every connection
- Env vars override vault (same priority as all other secrets)
Transport
Section titled “Transport”- IMAP uses implicit TLS (IMAPS :993). SMTP uses STARTTLS on :587 for the built-in presets (Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, Yahoo, Outlook); custom servers can be configured for implicit SMTPS :465 if needed.
- Minimum TLS 1.2, strict certificate validation
- Connection timeouts: 10s connect, 60s idle with exponential backoff
Content safety
Section titled “Content safety”- All email bodies are wrapped in
<untrusted_data>tags before the LLM sees them — defense against prompt injection via email content - Hidden HTML elements (display:none, font-size:0) are detected and stripped
- Scripts, styles, and HTML comments removed before text extraction
Send protection
Section titled “Send protection”- Interactive confirmation required for every send
- Mass-send guard: >5 recipients forces explicit confirmation with full recipient list
- Receive-only account types hard-blocked from sending (non-overrideable)
- Auto-reply loop protection (RFC 3834) — prevents responding to autoresponders
Token Efficiency
Section titled “Token Efficiency”lynox is designed to minimize LLM cost for email operations:
- Triage prefilter — deterministic noise filter skips ~60% of mail with zero LLM tokens (newsletters, no-reply, List-Unsubscribe)
- Envelope-only search — ~100 tokens per message (subject, from, date, 500-char snippet)
- Thread grouping — related messages shown as a single thread, not individual items
- Body cleaning — quoted history and signatures stripped, reducing token count by 30–70%
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Error | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| “Authentication failed” | Wrong password or 2FA not set up | Generate a new app password (see table above) |
| “TLS handshake failed” | Server doesn’t support TLS 1.2+ | Check your mail server’s TLS configuration |
| “Connection timed out” | Firewall or wrong server address | Verify host/port, check if IMAP is enabled in your provider settings |
| “Connection refused” | Wrong port or server down | Common: Gmail needs IMAP enabled in Gmail Settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP |
| “Rate limited” | Too many connection attempts | Wait a few minutes, then retry |
Gmail vs. Google Workspace
Section titled “Gmail vs. Google Workspace”lynox has two ways to access Gmail:
| Email (IMAP/SMTP) | Google Workspace | |
|---|---|---|
| Auth | App password | OAuth 2.0 |
| Setup time | 2 minutes | 5 minutes, or one click on lynox.cloud |
| Gmail access | Read + send | Only on a Full connection. The default (Standard) set asks for no Gmail scope at all, and a mailbox on such a connection is not registered. |
| Calendar, Drive | No | Yes — calendar events and the Drive files lynox creates are in the default set |
| Sheets, Docs | No | Only on Full |
| Works with non-Gmail | Yes | No |
| Best for | Any mailbox, including Gmail; multi-provider setups | Calendar and Drive; Gmail only if you want the heavier consent |
You can use both — they don’t conflict. For Gmail specifically, IMAP is the lighter path: reading mail over OAuth needs a restricted scope, which is the one class that costs an annual security assessment (see Google Workspace). An app password avoids it entirely.