Sending mail

Postvak sends new mail, replies and forwards from the command line with postvak send, and from the window (see Writing mail). Every message goes through the daemon’s outbox: it waits there for a few seconds, so you can still take it back, then goes out over SMTP, and a copy is saved in your Sent folder. Agents over MCP get no tool to send.

Drafts live in the account’s Drafts folder on the server, not in Postvak: the window saves them there and opens them from there (see Writing mail).

The SMTP server

Most accounts need no setup. When you add an account, and once for every account without SMTP settings when the daemon starts, Postvak tries the likely servers and keeps the first that logs in:

smtp.<domain>, where <domain> is your IMAP host without a leading imap. or mail.;
the IMAP host itself;

each on port 465 with TLS, then on port 587 with STARTTLS, logging in with the account’s IMAP username and password. A guess never logs in without TLS, and never tries a host outside your IMAP host’s own domain. It sends nothing.

For a new account, postvak account add saves what it found to config.toml. For an account you already had, the daemon keeps the guess to itself and never writes config.toml; save it there with:

postvak account smtp work --save

When no server answered, postvak daemon status says “Sending not set up”. Give the server yourself, which is checked by logging in before it is saved:

postvak account smtp work --smtp-host smtp.example.com --smtp-tls starttls
postvak account smtp work --guess      # try the guess again

postvak account add takes the same --smtp-host, --smtp-port and --smtp-tls to skip the guess. In config.toml the settings are a table per account:

[accounts.smtp]
host = "smtp.example.com"
port = 465                     # default by tls: 465 implicit, 587 starttls
tls = "implicit"               # implicit | starttls; there is no plain-text choice
username = "me"                # default: the account's IMAP username
password = { keyring = true }  # default: the account's IMAP password
save_sent = true               # default: off for Gmail and Outlook, on elsewhere

password = { keyring = true } here reads a keyring entry of its own, <account>/smtp; leave it out to use the IMAP password. password = { command = "…" } works as for IMAP.

Your name on From

[[accounts]]
name = "work"
display_name = "Pieter Willekens"
aliases = ["*@shop.example.com", { address = "info@example.com", name = "Example Shop" }]

Mail from the account goes out as Pieter Willekens <pieter@example.com>. An alias written as a table may carry a name of its own; a wildcard alias, or one without a name, uses display_name. Without one, From is the bare address.

postvak send

# A new message; the text comes from stdin
echo "See you at ten." | postvak send --to linus@example.org --subject "Tomorrow"

# Written in your editor ($VISUAL, else $EDITOR, else vi): the default when stdin is a terminal
postvak send --to linus@example.org --subject "Tomorrow" --edit

# With attachments
postvak send --to linus@example.org --subject "Report" --attach report.pdf --body-file note.txt

# Reply to the sender, to everyone, or to the mailing list of INBOX message 42
postvak send --reply INBOX/42
postvak send --reply-all INBOX/42
postvak send --reply-list INBOX/42

# Forward, with the original's text and attachments, or the whole message attached
postvak send --forward INBOX/42 --to boss@example.org
postvak send --forward INBOX/42 --as attachment --to boss@example.org

# From an alias
postvak send --from info@example.com --to linus@example.org --subject "Order" < order.txt

A reply goes to Reply-To, else From; a reply to a message of your own (in Sent) goes where that message went. Reply to all keeps the original To and Cc and leaves out every address of yours. The text you write goes above the quote, as in Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook; in the editor you may also answer between the quoted lines. A reply or forward of an HTML message is sent with the original as HTML too, inside a quote, with its images; the text you write is plain text.

Postvak checks every message before it queues it: From must be your address or an alias’s, every recipient a real address, and the message within the server’s size limit. A refused message is not queued.

Once the message has gone, the original gets the \Answered flag for a reply or $Forwarded for a forward.

The outbox and the undo delay

$ postvak send --reply INBOX/42 < answer.txt
Sending to Linus Example in 10 s (postvak outbox cancel 3f2a9c1b)

The message waits in the outbox for the undo delay, then goes. Until then:

postvak outbox                    # what waits, and what failed
postvak outbox cancel 3f2a9c1b    # take it back; prints the message
postvak outbox retry 3f2a9c1b     # send a waiting or failed one now

In the window, the toast after Send counts down with Undo (z) and Send now.

Set the delay in config.toml to 0, 5, 10 (the default), 20 or 30 seconds, or skip it for one message with --now:

[sending]
undo_secs = 10

The outbox lives on disk, so a message the daemon accepted survives a crash or a restart, and the daemon keeps running while a message waits. A message the daemon was handing to the server when it stopped is never sent twice: it is marked failed with “may have been sent; check Sent before retrying”. A server that says to try later is tried again for an hour; a refusal, such as an unknown recipient, fails the message at once, and no recipient gets it.

Rule forwards

A forward rule puts its forward in the same outbox, due at once: no person is there to take it back during an undo delay. A forward the server refuses stays in postvak outbox with the reason, so nothing is lost when the rule’s other actions already moved or deleted the original.

Sent copies

After the server took the message, the daemon saves a copy, read, in the folder marked as Sent, else in one called Sent. The copy keeps Bcc, so you can see who you sent it to; the recipients never see it. Gmail and Outlook file a copy themselves, so Postvak saves none there unless save_sent = true. When there is no Sent folder or the copy failed, postvak daemon status says so.

mutt, aerc and git send-email

postvak send --raw reads a whole message from stdin and sends it as it is, except that Bcc is removed, like sendmail. It skips the undo delay, waits for the server’s answer and exits as sendmail does: 0 when sent, 75 when the server said to try later (the message stays in the outbox and is retried), 69 when it was refused. It saves no copy in Sent, since these programs file their own, unless you pass --save-sent. The account is the one whose address or alias is the message’s From, or --account.

# mutt / neomutt
set sendmail = "postvak send --raw"

# aerc, in accounts.conf
outgoing = postvak send --raw

# git send-email
git config sendemail.sendmailCmd "postvak send --raw"

Of sendmail’s options, -i, -oi, -t and -f <address> are accepted (-f must equal From); any other is refused. Recipients are the addresses given, and with -t or none given, the message’s To, Cc and Bcc.

Agents

There is no MCP tool to send, and there will not be one. An agent can propose a forward rule, but it forwards nothing until you approve it in Postvak. An agent that you give a shell can still run postvak send like any other command; give it one only if you mean it to send mail as you.

Keyboard shortcuts

Postvak