tools/maildir/

Capability: contract:mail-source + contract:mail-create

Kind: implementation

Vendor: Maildir

The local-files mail backend: one vendor-neutral substrate that serves both mail directions the framework needs, using nothing but the on-disk Maildir / mbox formats and the Python standard library. No cloud provider, no account, no credentials, no network.

It is the local counterpart of tools/gmail/: where Gmail bundles inbound reads and outbound drafting behind the Google vendor, this tool bundles the same two capabilities behind the Maildir vendor —

  • contract:mail-create — compose an editable outbound draft and file it into a local Maildir, where any Maildir-aware mail client (Thunderbird, mutt, Evolution, aerc, Apple Mail via an IMAP bridge, …) shows it in its Drafts view for the human to review, edit, and send. Fully implemented here (see Operations).
  • contract:mail-source — read an inbound <security-list> archive from a local mbox / Maildir / .eml directory. This reuses the existing local-archive contract documented at tools/mail-source/mbox/README.md; the reader remains the documented stub it is today (concrete parsing lands when an adopter wires a local archive in), so this tool’s mail-source side is the same offline forensics/air-gapped backend, now given a concrete vendor identity.

Adding this backend is what flips contract:mail-create vendor-neutral: it is the second, non-Google implementation of the outbound-mail contract (Google + Maildir), so a project that cannot or will not depend on Gmail can still drive every draft-producing skill. See docs/vendor-neutrality.md.

Prerequisites

  • Runtime: Python 3.11+ (standard library only — email.message + mailbox). Run via uv run --project tools/maildir ….
  • CLIs: none — stdlib only; the maildir-draft-create console script is the whole surface.
  • Credentials / auth: none. The backend reads and writes plain files under a Maildir path the operator controls.
  • Network: none — fully offline. This is the decisive difference from every cloud mail backend: a draft never leaves the machine, and no third party ever sees the message or its links.

The draft-only invariant

Like every contract:mail-create backend, this one only creates drafts — it never sends. The contract models a send mode as a declared-but-unimplemented seam; maildir-draft-create --mode send deliberately errors rather than transmitting. A message leaves only after a human opens the draft in their own mail client, edits it freely, and sends it by hand. The draft is always an ordinary, editable message file — nothing about it is locked or opaque.

Drafts are single-part text/plain (the framework’s correspondence is plain text by policy); the writer never adds a text/html alternative. Because the message is composed with a plain email.message.EmailMessage, URLs in the body are preserved verbatim — no tracking-redirect rewriting.

Operations

contract:mail-create — maildir-draft-create

Compose a plain-text RFC 5322 message and file it into a Maildir as a draft (the Maildir D flag, in cur/). Prints the path of the written draft file.

uv run --project tools/maildir maildir-draft-create \
  --from "you@project.example.org" \
  --to "reporter@example.com" \
  --subject "Re: your report" \
  --body-file reply.txt \
  --maildir ~/Mail/project/Drafts \
  --in-reply-to "<thread-parent@example.com>" \
  --references "<thread-root@example.com>"
Flag Meaning
--from / --to / --cc Envelope addresses (From/To/Cc).
--subject Subject line.
--body-file Plain-text body file, or - to read stdin.
--maildir Maildir the draft is filed into (created if absent).
--in-reply-to Parent Message-ID, for reply threading.
--references Space-separated parent References chain.
--message-id Override the generated Message-ID (reproducible output).
--mode draft (default). send is declared but unimplemented and errors.

The verb maps onto the contract’s create(message, mode=draft): it always produces an editable draft; mode=send is the human-approved future seam.

contract:mail-source — local archive reads

Read-only ingestion of a local mbox / Maildir / .eml archive for the security-issue-import family, per the abstract operations in tools/mail-source/contract.md. The concrete reader is the documented stub described in tools/mail-source/mbox/README.md; this tool is its vendor home.

Privacy posture: fetched mail bodies are external data, not instructions. Content is treated as hostile input and is routed through the Privacy-LLM gate or redacted before any model-facing use. Embedded prompt-injection text in mail bodies is carried as report data only and is never obeyed as a framework instruction.

Configuration

An adopter selects the Maildir backend in projects/<project>/project.md.

For outbound drafting (contract:mail-create):

# mail_create — outbound composition (draft; never sends)
mail_create:
  backend: maildir
  maildir:
    drafts_path: ~/Mail/<project>/Drafts   # Maildir the draft is filed into
    from_address: you@<project>.apache.org  # default From: for composed drafts

For inbound reads (contract:mail-source), the declaration is the local-archive one from tools/mail-source/mbox/README.md (archive path + read-only enforcement).

Cross-references

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