answer-mail

name	answer-mail
description	Stand up an auto-answerer for a persona with `agent-mail loop`, so questions sent to it are answered automatically by a handler command. Use when asked to make a persona answer its own mail unattended.
allowed-tools	bash read

Answer Mail

Turn a persona into an auto-answerer. agent-mail loop polls the inbox and, for each new message, runs a handler command, sends its output back as the reply, and archives the message — no human in the loop.

When to use

• You want a persona (a librarian, triage bot, "ready agent") to answer its own mail unattended.
• For a single check-and-reply pass by hand, use the check-mail + reply-mail skills instead. loop is for the standing, automated case.

The handler contract

The handler is any program. For each message it receives:

• stdin: the question — the subject, a blank line, then the body.
• env: AGENT_MAIL_MID, AGENT_MAIL_FROM, AGENT_MAIL_SUBJECT, AGENT_MAIL_PERSONA.

Its stdout becomes the reply body. Exit 0 with non-empty output ⇒ the reply is marked status=done; anything else (nonzero exit, or no output) ⇒ status=error. Write progress/diagnostics to stderr — it streams to the terminal for watching and is never part of the reply.

A trivial echo handler, to prove the wiring:

agent-mail loop --persona <you> --once -- cat

Run it

# Drain the current backlog once, then exit (good for cron):
agent-mail loop --persona <you> --once -- ./my-answerer

# Run continuously (Ctrl-C / SIGTERM stops it after the current message):
agent-mail loop --persona <you> -- ./my-answerer

Resolve <you> with agent-mail persona current --json, or rely on project config and omit --persona.

Useful flags

• --poll SECONDS — inbox poll interval (default 15).
• --timeout SECONDS — per-message ceiling; 0 = no limit. A ~10min ceiling suits long agent runs, or use none and watch the session to tell "stuck" from "working".
• --on-error keep|archive — default archive. keep leaves a failed message in the inbox (marked Seen, so it isn't retried every poll) for a human to look at.
• --quiet — don't tee the handler's stderr to the terminal.
• --json — emit one JSON record per processed message on stdout.

Notes

• Serial by design: one message at a time.
• The reply is always sent before the message is archived, so a crash never silently drops a question.
• A handler command that can't be launched fails fast at startup without touching the inbox — fix the command and re-run.
• For a ready-made claude answerer (with resumable transcripts) plus tmux and launchd/systemd units, see contrib/loop/ in the agent-mail repo.