Integration with mail programs via IMAP

[larsen0815]

Is there a way to specify a connection to piler via IMAP in a mail program?

So, instead of using the browser to search for mails, a user could simply add the piler archive as a mail account in the mail program, and then search the archived mails with the mail program.

I couldn't find info that this was already possible, only about using IMAP server for authentification.

[jsuto]

There's none. Piler doesn't act as IMAP server. In theory it might be possible to write a custom IMAP server that reads data from the manticore database, retrieves emails from the archive and performs searches using manticore. Not sure if the effort (which is quite substantial) is worth it.

[larsen0815]

Ok, understood. In our small company, we only keep the last 3-6 months available in our mailserver and for older mails we rely on the mail store. Therefore, it would be useful to have a tighter integration with the mail client.

[jsuto]

OK, got it. I'm not saying it won't happen. Let's give a chance to an LLM. However, there would be some limitations, eg. no imap folders, everything would be in 'INBOX' folder. Also the authentication might be restricted compared to the variety of the piler UI.

I consulted with Claude, and this is what it said: https://github.com/jsuto/piler/blob/master/docs/imap-daemon-proposal.md

Let me know your thoughts on the matter.