Self-hosted-MCP/Selfhost-Remote-Mail-MCP

Selfhost-Remote-Mail-MCP
Your own email inside Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and other AI apps. On your computer and on your phone. Self-hosted, private, careful with sending.
Free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. Use it, fork it and change it, share your changes, and keep the credit. See Credits .
Quick start ·
Ways to run it ·
Several mailboxes ·
Add-ons ·
Safety ·
All guides
Choose which mailboxes each AI app may use
Add mailboxes, set modes, manage apps
You run it yourself, so your password stays with you and no company in the middle reads your mail.
It works with almost any mailbox: Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, Yahoo, Zoho, a mailbox on your own domain, and most others. Your AI app can read, search, sort and write drafts. It sends an email only when you say so.
You: Anything urgent from this week? Draft a reply to Sam saying Thursday works.
AI: Reads your inbox, writes the reply into your Drafts folder and shows it to you.
Nothing goes out until you say "send it".
You: (drops invoice.pdf into the chat) Email this to Sam.
AI: Uploads the file to your server by itself, attaches it to a draft and shows it to you.
## How it works, in one picture
The server is a small program. Your AI app talks to it through MCP (Model Context Protocol), a standard way for AI apps to use outside tools. The server then talks to your mailbox the way a normal mail app does. The authors of this project never see your mail, your password or anything else: there is no account, no cloud service and no tracking.
## Words you'll see
| Word | What it means here |
| IMAP and SMTP | The standard ways mail apps read (IMAP) and send (SMTP) email. Your provider lists its IMAP and SMTP server names. |
| App password | A separate password your provider makes for one app. You can delete it any time without changing your real password. Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo need one. |
| Passphrase | A long password you make up for your server. It locks the settings page, and you type it once when you connect an AI app over the internet. |
| MCP | How AI apps plug into tools like this one. |
| Draft | An email saved in your Drafts folder. The AI writes drafts. Sending is a separate step. |
| Settings file | A small text file with your settings, ~/.config/selfhost-remote-mail-mcp/.env on a computer. setup writes it. Hosting companies use their own "Variables" page instead |
| Data folder | Where the server keeps its own files (logins, send log, uploads). On a computer ~/.config/selfhost-remote-mail-mcp/state, in Docker and on hosting companies /data |
## Choose how to run it
| | Where it runs | Works on your phone | Cost | Time | Guide |
| 1. Your computer | Your Mac, Windows or Linux computer, settings page at localhost:8765 | Only while the computer is on, with a free tunnel | Free | 5 minutes | setup-computer.md |
| 2. A hosting company | Railway, Render, Fly.io or others, in the cloud | Always | About $5 to $8 a month | 10 minutes, no terminal needed | setup-hosting.md |
| 3. Your own server | Any server with Docker | Always | Free to cheap | 15 minutes, for people used to servers | setup-own-server.md |
Option 2 in one click: Railway or Render sets everything up and asks you for one passphrase. Steps.