How to give an AI agent
its own email inbox.

1. Create an identity

Sign up at console.loomal.ai. Create an identity — this provisions the mailbox, the vault, and the TOTP store under one record. Each identity gets a unique address (e.g. agent-x8k2m@loomal.ai) and an API key (loid-...).

For a custom domain (sales@yourcompany.com), paid plans let you configure your own. Set SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records once; Loomal handles per-identity signing from that point on.

2. Send a first email (sanity check)

Before wiring anything up, confirm outbound works with a one-liner.

curl -X POST https://api.loomal.ai/v0/messages/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOOMAL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": ["you@example.com"],
    "subject": "First email from my agent",
    "text": "If you see this, it worked."
  }'

3. Configure inbound — webhook or poll

Two options. Webhook is better for production: Loomal POSTs to your endpoint the moment mail arrives. Polling is simpler for prototyping: your agent calls mail.list_messages on a schedule.

For webhooks, add the URL in the identity's Webhooks tab and sign the secret into your handler (see the Node.js webhook how-to for the receive-side code).

import os, requests, time

headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['LOOMAL_API_KEY']}"}

while True:
    res = requests.get(
        "https://api.loomal.ai/v0/messages",
        headers=headers,
        params={"labels": "unread", "limit": 10},
    )
    for msg in res.json()["messages"]:
        # msg['extractedText'] is LLM-ready
        # Hand it to your agent, then mark read:
        requests.patch(
            f"https://api.loomal.ai/v0/messages/{msg['messageId']}",
            headers=headers,
            json={"addLabels": ["read"], "removeLabels": ["unread"]},
        )
    time.sleep(60)

4. Reply in-thread

When the agent responds, use /v0/messages/:messageId/reply instead of /send. Loomal stitches the reply into the original thread automatically — no In-Reply-To or References headers to manage.

curl -X POST https://api.loomal.ai/v0/messages/$MSG_ID/reply \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOOMAL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "text": "Yes, Tuesday at 2pm works. Sending an invite now." }'

5. Hand the primitives to your framework

If your agent uses Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK, LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra, AutoGen, Pydantic AI, or n8n — see the framework guides for the one-config-block MCP setup. The REST approach works everywhere; MCP is shorter where it's supported.