Mail Memex

mail-memex

Personal email archive with SQLite+FTS5 full-text search and an MCP server for LLM access.

Part of the [`*-memex` ecosystem](../memex) of co-located personal archives: `llm-memex` (AI conversations), `bookmark-memex`, `photo-memex`, `book-memex`, `hugo-memex`, and `health-memex`.

What It Does

• Ingests email from Gmail Takeout, mbox files, .eml files, or IMAP (Gmail OAuth2 or any IMAP server).
• Indexes every message with SQLite FTS5 for ranked full-text search (Porter stemming, BM25 weighting).
• Rebuilds threads from In-Reply-To / References headers.
• Exposes the archive as an MCP server so LLMs can query it with SQL or Gmail-style operators.
• Exports to JSON, mbox, markdown, a single-file HTML SPA (embedded SQLite via sql.js), or arkiv JSONL for cross-archive ingestion.
• Marginalia: attach free-form notes to any email, thread, or marginalia itself, addressable by durable URIs that survive re-imports.
• Soft-deletes: archived emails and threads stay queryable but are filtered from default results, so MCP trails and marginalia references don't break.

mail-memex is **not an email client**. It does not send or reply to mail. It's a long-term archive and an LLM-queryable surface on top of your mail history.

Install

pip install -e ".[mcp,imap,imap-oauth]"

Optional extras: `mcp` (MCP server), `imap` (IMAP pull with keyring), `imap-oauth` (Gmail OAuth2).

Quick Start

# 1. Initialize
mail-memex init

# 2. Import from Gmail Takeout, mbox, or eml
mail-memex import gmail ~/takeout/"All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox"
mail-memex import mbox archive.mbox
mail-memex import eml ~/Mail/

# 3. Search
mail-memex search "project proposal"
mail-memex search "from:alice after:2024-01-01 has:attachment"

# 4. Start MCP server (LLM-facing)
mail-memex mcp

CLI Commands

Command	Purpose
mail-memex init	Create the database
`mail-memex import {mbox,eml,gma