RAVEN

A minimal terminal email client — read and send, arrow-key navigation, no Enter-mashing. Zero runtime dependencies: imaplib, smtplib, ssl, email, and msvcrt are all Python standard library.

 RAVEN — you@gmail.com

  >  Alice                    Re: build broken again
     GitHub                   [repo] New issue opened
     Bob                      lol did you see this

 [↑↓] navigate   [Enter] open   [c] compose   [r] refresh   [q] quit

Install

From this folder:

pip install -e .

(-e = editable install; edit src/raven/cli.py and changes take effect immediately, no reinstall needed. Drop -e for a normal install.)

This registers a raven command on your PATH — no more python raven.py.

Configure

Copy raven.ini.example to raven.ini and fill in your details. Put it in either:

• the folder you run raven from, or
• ~/.raven/raven.ini (or %APPDATA%\raven\raven.ini on Windows) — works from anywhere, recommended once you're happy with it.

host = imap.gmail.com
port = 993
smtp_host = smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port = 465
user = you@gmail.com
pass = your-app-password-here
fetch_count = 30

Gmail: use an App Password, not your real password (needs 2-Step Verification enabled first). Same password works for both IMAP and SMTP.

Run

raven

Notes

• raven.ini is a plaintext credentials file — don't commit it, don't share it. It's not part of the installed package; it's your local config.
• Prefers a message's plain-text part. HTML-only messages go through a small built-in HTML→text reducer (strips scripts/styles/hidden preheader text, keeps link URLs inline).
• No message caching between runs — r re-fetches from the server.

Uninstall

pip uninstall raven-mail