Gmail IMAP Digest

Use this skill when a user wants a daily roundup of newsletter-style email pulled over IMAP, filtered to sources they actually trust. It reads inbox messages since a cutoff, keeps only allowlisted sender domains, and renders a compact digest you can pipe straight into an alert. Works with any IMAP provider; Gmail just needs an app-password with IMAP enabled.

When to invoke

• User says: "build a daily email digest" / "fetch my newsletters" / "summarize my inbox each morning" / "IMAP fetch"
• Code in the conversation uses: scheduled inbox reads, sender filtering, or a morning roundup job.

When NOT to invoke

• The user wants to send mail (SMTP), not read it.
• The integration should use a provider's OAuth API (Gmail API) rather than plain IMAP.

Concrete example

User input:

Every morning, pull anything new from my three AI newsletters and give me a one-line-per-item digest.

Output:

# Copy assets/imap_fetch.py into your project, then:
from imap_fetch import fetch_digest, render_digest

rows = fetch_digest(since_hours=24, allow={"newsletter.example.com", "digest.example.org"})
print(render_digest(rows))
# Daily digest - 2 item(s):
#   - Weekly model roundup  ([email protected])
#   - New tools this week    ([email protected])

The helper reads IMAP_HOST, IMAP_USER, and IMAP_APP_PASSWORD from the environment. See assets/.env.example for the placeholder file.

Pattern to apply

1. Connect over IMAP4_SSL and open the inbox read-only so nothing is marked read.
2. Search SINCE a date cutoff to bound the scan.
3. Parse each message's From address and keep only allowlisted domains (exact or subdomain match).
4. Decode MIME-encoded subjects before display.
5. Render a flat digest and hand it to an alert channel (see [[telegram-alerter]]).

Reference: assets/imap_fetch.py, assets/.env.example.

Source

Distilled from production use across the author's automation projects. v1.0.0. See also: [[pipeline-orchestrator]], [[telegram-alerter]].

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