Connect a mailbox, then just ask.

1. Connect the mailbox you already own

   Sign in to the control panel and add a mailbox. Microsoft 365 takes one Microsoft sign-in. Gmail takes an app password. Anything else takes the IMAP settings your mail app already uses.

   Each has its own guide, and each guide is honest about the awkward parts: Microsoft 365, Gmail, or any IMAP host.

2. Add the server to your AI client

   The panel gives you a URL. Add it to your AI app as a connector, and the mail tools appear in the list of things it can use.

   That's the whole integration. There's no download, no local process, and no key file on your laptop that stops working when you get a new one.

   Claude and ChatGPT are where most people start, so they're the 2 this site names. The same URL works anywhere else that speaks MCP.

3. Ask for what you would have done yourself

   There are no commands and no syntax to learn. You describe the outcome, and your assistant uses the tools to get there.

   Find the thread with Hollis about the March invoice,
   reply attaching the revised quote from my Drafts,
   and file the original under Clients.

   It searches the mailbox and opens the thread. It writes the reply with the right headers, so it lands inside the conversation rather than beside it. Then it attaches the file, sends, and moves the original. Afterwards, the mailbox looks as if you'd done it yourself.

   And a question you ask every morning can stop being one you ask: set it once as a routine and your AI asks it for you.

• Microsoft 365: approve calendar access.

  There's no second sign-in: a Microsoft 365 mailbox is asked for calendar access on the same sign-in as the mail. Approve it, and your AI app is handed all 21 calendar tools as well as the email ones.

• Any other calendar: a CalDAV address.

  IMAP is a mail protocol with no calendar inside it, at any host, so connecting the mail can't connect the diary. Most hosts run a separate calendar server speaking CalDAV. Give us its address and the calendar tools appear.

  Fastmail, iCloud and Nextcloud all run one. On Fastmail and iCloud the same app password opens both, so it's usually one field.

• Google Calendar: sign in with Google.

  It's a sign-in rather than an address, and it works on any mailbox, not only a Gmail one. You choose an account, Google shows you what's being asked for before you approve, and it covers the diary only, never the mail.

  The Google account doesn't have to match the mailbox's address. That matters more often than it sounds: plenty of people keep the work diary and the work mail in different places.

• Why a Gmail app password can't open the diary.

  An app password, the kind a Gmail mailbox connects with, is a mail credential: it opens IMAP and SMTP and nothing else. Google runs a CalDAV server too, and it refuses that same app password, so no amount of pasting would get you in.

  A Google diary needs a Google permission, which is why there's a button rather than a field. You can withdraw it from your Google account at any time, and disconnecting it here hands the permission back rather than leaving it sitting on your account page.

• Each CalDAV server is asked what it can do.

  No 2 are quite alike: one sends invitations to other people and answers who's free, another only stores events. We open the account before anything is saved, and its answer decides which tools are registered. The panel names them, so what your app is offered is what will work on your calendar.

• No calendar, no calendar tools.

  Not tools that answer "this mailbox has no calendar", but none at all. A tool certain to refuse still spends a call from your daily allowance to say so, invites the model to try another way, and advertises something you didn't buy. The server reads what your connection covers and registers to match, so the list your app shows is the list that will work.

• A password mailbox doesn't bring its address book.

  IMAP is a mail protocol with no contacts inside it, so on a mailbox that connects with a password, the book is a step of its own. Google contacts take a Google sign-in of their own. Most other hosts run a CardDAV contacts server, with an address you give us.

  On Microsoft 365 there's nothing to connect: the Outlook contacts come with the mail.

  How each kind of book connects

  • A Microsoft 365 mailbox brings its Outlook contacts with the mail, on the same sign-in, so there is no address to give and nothing to connect. Microsoft 365 set-up
  • Any mailbox that connects with a password, Gmail or any other IMAP host, one with no CardDAV server included, can bring its Google contacts with a Google sign-in of their own, from the mailbox's Connection tab in the control panel: the mail keeps its password, and a Google calendar on the same account is left as it was. Google contacts set-up
  • Any other book is the address of a CardDAV contacts server, given on a mailbox that connects with a password. Fastmail, iCloud, Nextcloud and StackMail all publish one. Setting up CalDAV and CardDAV
  • The CardDAV book is the list a phone or a desktop mail app syncs to. A contacts list that some webmail programs keep inside webmail, separate from it, isn't read, and importing a file is the way across.
• A contact is looked up, then forgotten.

  When you ask for a person, our server asks your contacts server, Microsoft or Google that one question. It keeps the answer in memory for about 10 minutes so the next question is quick, then lets it go.

  Nothing about a contact is written to a database, a file or a log of ours. So there's no copy of your address book here to leak, to be subpoenaed, or to be sold in an insolvency.

  What we do keep, and what happens to photos

  • For a CardDAV book: its address and a credential for it, sealed as a calendar's are.
  • For Outlook contacts: nothing beyond the grant the mailbox already had.
  • For Google contacts: the token Google issued, sealed as the calendar's is.
  • Photos are never read into an answer: a look-up doesn't request one. On a CardDAV card you ask it to correct, the photograph passes through in memory for that one request and is written back exactly as it was, never shown to the assistant and never held. On an Outlook or a Google contact, it's never requested at all.
• Your assistant finds people in the book and in your mail.

  Without a book, it finds addresses in the mail you've already sent and received, as it always has, and it keeps doing so once there is one. With a book, find_contact reads it as well, and a person from the book comes back with every address, the phone numbers, the postal addresses with their postcodes, the employer and the job title.

  The mailbox half of a find_contact search reads each folder's most recent 3,000 messages, and says so in one sentence when a folder held more; a person last in touch with before that is not in the mailbox half of the result, and the book still has them if they are in it.

• A card is written to your own book, once, and only where you asked.

  Where the book lets your sign-in write to it, as Outlook contacts and Google contacts always do, a connection at Draft and file can add a card, correct one and import a contacts file. One at Send and delete can delete one. A CardDAV book that can only be read offers none of those.

  Each write goes to your own contacts server, your Outlook contacts or your Google contacts, and shows in your phone and your mail app exactly as if you'd typed it there.

  How each book adds and imports cards

  • On a CardDAV book a new card is written under a fresh id of its own, with a precondition that nothing already sits at that address, so it can never write over a card that is there.
  • On Outlook contacts a new card is one request to Microsoft, which mints the card's id, so there is nothing to be already taken and nothing to write over.
  • On Google contacts a new card is one request to Google, which mints the card's id, so there is nothing to be already taken and nothing to write over.
  • The import takes a vCard export that's already in the mailbox: email the file to yourself, or drop it on an upload link your assistant makes, then ask for the import.
  • On a CardDAV book each imported card is written once under the id the export gave it or, where the export wrote none, a fingerprint of the card's own text, so a card already in the book is skipped and running the same file again adds nothing.
  • On Outlook contacts an imported card is skipped where the folder already holds its first email address (Microsoft mints the ids, so there is no card id to land on twice), a card with no email address is added every time, and a group card is not imported.
  • On Google contacts an imported card is skipped where the book already holds its first email address (Google mints the ids, as Microsoft does), a card with no email address is added every time, a group card is not imported, and the rest go to Google in batches rather than one at a time.
  • On a Microsoft mailbox the fields this server names come across (name, emails, phones, postal addresses, company, job title, note); a birthday, a photo, a web address or the categories in the export do not, and a card with two postal addresses of one type keeps the first of each, since Outlook holds one home, one work and one other address.
  • On Google contacts the same named fields come across, each email address and phone number keeping its type; a birthday, a photo, a web address or the categories in the export do not.
• Nothing is written over a change made somewhere else.

  A correction or a delete lands on the card exactly as it was just read, on every route. If your phone changed the card in the meantime, the write is refused rather than written over.

  A correction touches only the fields it names, so the photo and the birthday your contacts app put there stay as they were.

• Every write was checked in a real contacts app first.

  Each one was checked against the deployed release before this page said so, and the test was the one above: the change shows up exactly as if you'd typed it there.

  Where each write was checked

  • The CardDAV writes in Thunderbird.
  • The Outlook ones in Outlook's People, on a real Microsoft 365 mailbox, where a card added from ChatGPT appeared, took a correction and was removed, each step seen in People before the next was run.
  • The Google ones at contacts.google.com, on a real Google account, where a card was corrected, deleted and created again, each step seen there first.

The tool reference puts the 3 kinds of address book side by side, question by question.