How-To Guide
Connect Hermes Agent to Your Email Inbox
Connect Hermes Agent to your email for AI-powered inbox management, auto-replies, and smart filtering.
Quick answer
Connect Hermes to email to turn it into an inbox assistant that drafts replies, summarizes threads, filters noise, and handles routine correspondence. Enable the email channel in config with your mailbox credentials; as with any channel, confirm the CLI agent works first and scope what the agent is allowed to send.
Connecting Hermes to your email inbox turns it into an AI-powered email assistant — it can draft replies, summarize threads, filter spam, and handle routine correspondence on your behalf.
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Before you start:
- ☑Hermes Agent installed
- ☑Your email provider's IMAP and SMTP settings (host, port, credentials)
- ☑An app-specific password if your provider uses 2FA (Gmail, Outlook require this)
Steps
- 1
Configure IMAP
Add your email IMAP settings to config.yaml: host, port, username, password
- 2
Configure SMTP
Add SMTP settings for sending: host, port, username, password, from address
- 3
Set up rules
Define email rules: which emails to process, auto-reply conditions, labeling logic
- 4
Enable the email plugin
Set email: enabled: true in config.yaml
- 5
Test
hermes restart — send yourself a test email and verify Hermes processes it
Pro Tips
- 💡Start with read-only access (IMAP only) before enabling SMTP sending — verify Hermes is summarizing and filtering correctly before letting it reply
- 💡Use rules to limit which emails Hermes processes: filter by sender domain, subject keywords, or label to avoid overwhelming the agent
- 💡Hermes works well with Gmail's label system — assign emails a 'Hermes' label to queue them for processing
Troubleshooting
❌ IMAP authentication fails even with correct credentials
✅ If using Gmail or Outlook with 2FA, generate an app-specific password in your account security settings. Regular passwords won't work when 2FA is enabled.
❌ Hermes reads emails but doesn't mark them as processed
✅ Set 'email: markAsRead: true' in config.yaml so Hermes marks emails after processing. Without this, it may re-process the same emails on each run.
❌ SMTP sending fails with SSL/TLS errors
✅ Check your SMTP port: 465 requires SSL, 587 requires STARTTLS. Set 'email: smtp: tls: true' for port 465 or 'email: smtp: starttls: true' for port 587.
FAQ
What can Hermes do with email access?
Draft replies, summarize long threads, triage and filter, and handle routine correspondence. It becomes an AI layer over your inbox rather than a separate chat.
Is it safe to give an agent my inbox?
Scope it deliberately. Use a dedicated address or restricted access, review what the agent is allowed to send, and consider Tirith approvals on outbound mail so nothing goes out unsupervised.
Can email trigger the agent?
Yes — configured as a channel, incoming mail can prompt Hermes to act (summarize, classify, route), and the agent can reply or notify you with the result.