Email and Calendar

Overview

TDE Email is a multi-account IMAP client that keeps everything in a local database, so reading and drafting work whether or not you have a connection. The Calendar is not a separate app — it is a pane inside TDE Email, opened with c.

Adding an account

The account screen offers exactly two paths.

Continue with Google runs a browser OAuth flow. TDE opens the consent URL in TDE Browser's Mobile mode, so you scan a QR code and approve on your phone. The server settings are filled in for you (imap.gmail.com:993 and smtp.gmail.com:465, both TLS), and IMAP authenticates with XOAUTH2. TDE never asks for your Google password — the hosted broker owns the client secret and the refresh token lands in this device's encrypted vault.

Other IMAP is the manual form: display name, email address, username, IMAP host and port, SMTP host and port, password, and a TLS / STARTTLS toggle. For most providers the password field wants an app password, not your account password.

Where credentials live

Passwords and refresh tokens go into the encrypted secret vault, never into a config file. Account metadata — addresses, hosts, ports, display names — is stored separately in ~/.tde/email/accounts.json, which by design contains no secrets. IMAP and SMTP passwords are held under separate keys, so a relay with different credentials is representable.

Each account row on the account screen carries Edit, Test connection, Reconnect, Sync, Bot and Remove.

Sync and the local store

Each account gets its own SQLite database at ~/.tde/email/<account-id>.db, with attachments kept as files under ~/.tde/email/attachments/. The UI reads from that store and nothing else, which is why the inbox opens instantly and stays readable offline.

Sync is incremental by IMAP UID — it asks only for messages newer than the last one it has. If the server changes UIDVALIDITY, TDE clears that folder's cache and reimports it rather than attaching new server UIDs to unrelated cached rows. HTML bodies are sanitized and converted to Markdown on the way in, with the original sanitized HTML kept alongside. Messages are threaded from their Message-ID, In-Reply-To and References headers.

Sync is an explicit action — press s, or use the Sync chip on the account screen. It is not a background poller.

Reading

With the body focused, ↑ and ↓ scroll the message instead of changing the selection. Attachments on a received message are listed and can be opened in their associated app.

Composing

The composer is a fixed field order — To → Cc → Bcc → Subject → Body → Preview → Save → Send — walked with ↑ and ↓ (or Tab to go forward). Enter or Space on the last three toggles the rendered preview, saves a local draft, or sends.

The body is Markdown. On send, TDE builds a proper multipart/alternative message: your raw Markdown as text/plain and the rendered version as text/html, so it reads correctly in any client. Replies and forwards carry the right In-Reply-To and References headers so threads hold together, and Bcc recipients stay in the SMTP envelope rather than the visible headers.

Esc closes the preview if it is open; otherwise it returns to the mailbox and auto-saves the draft when there is anything in it.

Calendar

Press c from the mailbox. The Calendar is backed by CalDAV over HTTPS with iCalendar payloads, cached in a local SQLite database alongside your mail.

Add a calendar with a: server URL (must be https://), username, a display name, and a password — again typically an app password. Then ← and → switch between calendars, ↑ and ↓ move through events, s syncs, and Delete removes the selected event.

From an agent

An agent can work your mail through four structured commands. They read the local store and write local drafts; they never touch SMTP.

ID=$(tde agent windows | awk -F '\t' '$2=="TDE Email"{print $1}')
tde agent email $ID accounts
tde agent email $ID list
tde agent email $ID read <message-id>
tde agent email $ID draft you@example.com | Status update | The build is green.

accounts and list return tab-separated rows; read returns the headers and the message body as Markdown; draft saves a draft and returns its id.

The full agent surface is documented in the agent API.