Relay - protocol-native CLI for email management

CLI ・ Discord ・ Documentation

Relay helps builds create apps on email workflows. See it as a crossover between an email client and Claude code ✉️

Quick Tour

Fetching your unread emails

relay messages ls --limit 10 --unread

Using account: piedpiper
                            Messages from richard@piedpiper.com
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ UID   ┃ Timestamp                ┃ From                          ┃ Subject    ┃ Snippet    ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 15443 │ 2025-06-23 12:35:44 UTC  │ gilfoyle@piedpiper.com        │ Server     │ The        │
│       │                          │                               │ migration  │ migration  │
│       │                          │                               │ complete   │ is done... │
│ 15467 │ 2025-06-26 12:46:09 UTC  │ dinesh@piedpiper.com          │ RE: My     │ Actually   │
│       │                          │                               │ code is    │ Gilfoyle,  │
│       │                          │                               │ perfect    │ your cod...│
│ 15555 │ 2025-07-08 15:46:27 UTC  │ jared@piedpiper.com           │ Team       │ Hi guys!   │
│       │                          │                               │ building   │ I've       │
│       │                          │                               │ retreat    │ organized..│
│ 15587 │ 2025-07-10 13:34:48 UTC  │ monica@raviga.com             │ Q3         │ Richard,   │
│       │                          │                               │ metrics    │ we need to │
│       │                          │                               │ review     │ discuss... │
│ 15588 │ 2025-07-10 14:22:49 UTC  │ gavin@hooli.com               │ Acquisition│ Pied Piper │
│       │                          │                               │ offer      │ team, I'm  │
│       │                          │                               │            │ prepared...│
└───────┴──────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
Showing 5 of 5 unread messages

Reading email details

relay messages cat 15443

Using account: piedpiper

Message Details
UID: 15443
Timestamp: 2025-06-23 12:35:44 UTC
Subject: Server migration complete
From: "Bertram Gilfoyle" <gilfoyle@piedpiper.com>
To: richard@piedpiper.com
CC: dinesh@piedpiper.com, jared@piedpiper.com
BCC: N/A

Message Body:
The migration is done. Obviously.

While you were all probably panicking about downtime (which never happened),
I successfully migrated our entire server infrastructure to the new data center.

Key accomplishments:
- Migrated 47 servers in 3.2 hours
- Implemented redundant failsafes
- Optimized database queries by 340%
- Fixed 23 security vulnerabilities

Richard, the system is now running at 99.97% efficiency. The remaining 0.03%
is due to the laws of physics, which even I cannot override.

Dinesh, I've documented everything in a way that even you might comprehend,
though I make no guarantees.

The servers are purring like a well-fed cat. You may now return to your
regularly scheduled mediocrity.

--
Bertram Gilfoyle
Senior Systems Architect
Pied Piper Inc.

No attachments

Get started 🚀

Prerequisites

• UV

30 seconds setup ⏱️ (docs)

1 - Install the CLI

pip install relaycli

2 - Connect your email account

relay accounts add

Follow the instructions to connect your email account.

3 - Play with the CLI

relay messages --help

 Usage: relay messages [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

 Email message commands


╭─ Options ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --help          Show this message and exit.                                                │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ list | ls              List recent emails from specified account.                          │
│ open | cat             Read a single email message by UID.                                 │
│ search | find | grep   Search for messages containing the specified query.                 │
│ trash | rm             Move a message to trash.                                            │
│ spam                   Mark a message as spam.                                             │
│ mark                   Mark a message as read or unread.                                   │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Contributing

Oh hello there 👋 If you've scrolled this far, we bet it's because you like open-source. Do you feel like integrating a new email provider? Or perhaps improve our documentation? Or contributing in any other way?

You're in luck! You'll find everything you need in our contributing guide to help grow this project! And if you're interested, you can join us on Discord 🤗

Copying & distribution

Copyright (C) 2025, Relay.

This program is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE or go to https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 for full license details.