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himalaya-email-manager

Email management using Himalaya CLI tool (IMAP). Search, summarize, and delete emails from an IMAP a

by akaihola|Open Source

Himalaya Email Manager

Natural language interface for email management using Himalaya IMAP CLI tool.

Quick Start

Get Daily Summary

Get a summary of emails from the past 24 hours:

uv run scripts/email-summary.py

Search Emails

Search by sender, subject, date, or folder:

# Basic search (latest 20)
uv run scripts/email-search.py

# By sender
uv run scripts/email-search.py --from "spotify.com"

# By subject
uv run scripts/email-search.py --subject "invoice"

# By date range
uv run scripts/email-search.py --date-start "2025-12-01" --date-end "2025-12-31"

# Multiple filters
uv run scripts/email-search.py --from "@newsletter.com" --subject "unsubscribe" --limit 5

Save Emails

Save email content to file (attachments are downloaded by default):

# Save as markdown (attachments downloaded)
uv run scripts/email_save.py 56873

# Save to specific directory (attachments downloaded)
uv run scripts/email_save.py 56873 --output ~/saved-emails

# Save with date prefix (attachments downloaded)
uv run scripts/email_save.py 56873 --date-prefix

# Save as JSON (attachments downloaded)
uv run scripts/email_save.py 56873 --format json

# Save from Sent folder (attachments downloaded)
uv run scripts/email_save.py --folder Sent 12345

# Save without attachments
uv run scripts/email_save.py 56873 --no-download-attachments

Delete Emails

Delete with safety preview:

# Preview deletion
uv run scripts/email-delete.py 56838

# Actually delete
uv run scripts/email-delete.py 56838 --execute

Natural Language Queries

  • "Show me emails from Spotify from the last week"
  • "Find all emails about invoices"
  • "Save email ID 56873"
  • "Save email with attachments to ~/documents"
  • "Delete email ID 56838"
  • "What did I send yesterday?"

Installation

Himalaya must be installed on your system. Test your installation:

himalaya --help

The IMAP account is configured in ~/.config/himalaya/config.toml.

All scripts use PEP 723 inline metadata and require Python 3.13+. Invoke with uv run to automatically handle Python environment and dependencies.

  • ✅ Fast IMAP search (server-side)
  • ✅ Safe deletion with preview (dry-run by default)
  • ✅ Save emails to file (markdown, text, JSON formats)
  • ✅ Download email attachments with custom directory support
  • ✅ Folder support (INBOX, Sent, Drafts, Archive, etc.)
  • ✅ Unicode support (Finnish characters, emojis)
  • ✅ Date range filtering
  • ✅ Multiple search criteria
  • ✅ Message ID-based safe deletion

Safety

  • Delete operations show preview before execution (dry-run by default)
  • Save operations prompt before overwriting existing files (use --overwrite to skip)
  • Attachment downloads default to current directory, matching email save location (customize with --attachment-dir)
  • Uses message UIDs for safe identification
  • Changes sync immediately with IMAP server

Troubleshooting

For connection issues, see references/troubleshooting.md.

Script Reference

For detailed script documentation, see references/scripts.md.

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