# Email for agents

> An agent can have its own email address. You control who it may email, who may email it, and what happens to mail from senders it does not know.

An agent can send and receive email from its own address. Mail it sends comes
from that address, and replies come back to the agent as messages in its
chats. Who it may write to, and who may write to it, is yours to control under
the agent's email settings. For what an agent is and who manages it, see
[Agents, ownership, and visibility](https://bolter.chat/help/agents).

That address is a real mailbox that Bolter runs. It needs no outside mail
account and no connected provider: an agent with an address can send and
receive from the moment it has one, whether or not anyone has connected Google
Workspace or anything else to the workspace. Connecting Google is for reading
and writing a person's own mailbox, which is a different thing entirely. See
[Google connector](https://bolter.chat/help/connectors/google_workspace).

## Finding an agent's email settings

Open the agent's profile, go to the Advanced tab, then the Email sub-tab. The
agent's creator can manage these settings, and so can an owner or admin of the
workspace the agent belongs to.

The settings screen has three sections:

- Inbound Email Mode. How the agent treats mail from senders it does not know
  yet.
- Email Rules. Addresses and domains you allow or block. These apply both
  ways: who the agent may email, and who may email it.
- Pending Screening. Mail held from unknown senders, waiting for your decision.

The agent's own email address appears at the top of the Email sub-tab, with
a button to copy it. It shows there even for people who cannot change the
settings. It is set when the agent is created: the agent's name followed by a
short random code, such as atlas-8fh79a, and it cannot be changed. An agent
without an address cannot send until it has one.

## The agent's address

A new agent's address ends in `@agents.bolter.chat`, so an agent called Atlas
might be `atlas-8fh79a@agents.bolter.chat`. That suffix is shared by every
agent on Bolter and is separate from the address Bolter itself sends from.

Agents that were already using email before this change, or whose email
settings had been set up, kept their address ending in plain `@bolter.chat`,
so nothing their contacts or signups point at broke. Such an agent still sends from its `@bolter.chat`
address and receives mail at both. The address shown on the Email sub-tab is
always the one the agent sends from. Other agents have no `@bolter.chat`
address, and mail sent to one reaches nobody.

## Allowing and blocking rules

Add a rule by choosing Email address or Domain, then Allow or Block, and
entering the value. An allowed address or domain is one the agent may email
autonomously, and one that may reach the agent without being held for review.
A blocked one is refused in both directions.

A domain allow applies to a domain your own team controls, such as your company's.
It is not honored for a public or disposable mail provider (gmail.com and the
like), or for the address suffix that every agent shares, because one rule
there would cover many unrelated people and agents rather than the one you
mean. For those, allow the specific address instead. Blocking a whole domain
always works.

## Mail from unknown senders

Under Inbound Email Mode, Screened is the default: mail from a sender the agent
does not know is held in Pending Screening for you to decide. From a held
email you can allow the sender, allow their whole domain, allow just that one
message, or block the sender, their domain, or just that one message. Allowing
or blocking a sender or a domain also settles the other mail already held from
them, so you decide once rather than per email.

Mail the sender's domain could not vouch for is marked unverified, because
someone else could have sent it in their name. Forwarded mail is almost always
unverified, since the forwarder sends it on under the original sender's
address. An allowed sender's unverified mail is still held for you, unless you
chose "Always from" that sender "even unverified" on a held email: from then
on their mail arrives without asking, and the agent is told it could not be
verified. For a sender the agent does not know yet, that choice sits under
More. The sender shows "Also when unverified" under Allowed Addresses. Press
Verified only there to go back to holding their unverified mail while keeping
them allowed. Blocking or removing them, or blocking their domain, withdraws it
too. Only a single address can be allowed this way, never a whole domain.

Open delivers mail from every sender without asking. Closed refuses anything from a sender or domain
that is not already allowed.

## What the agent may send

An agent may always email its owner. The owner's verified email address counts
as allowed without any rule.

When the agent sends on its own, such as on a schedule or in reply to an email
that arrived for it, every recipient must be someone you have
allowed: an address or a domain you have allowed in Email Rules, a sender you
approved from Pending Screening, or the owner's verified address.

Work you asked for yourself stays yours when it finishes later. If you ask the
agent to run a build or a report and email the result, it drafts that email
for you to review and send when the work is done, even if you asked it to send
the email itself.

If the agent tries to email someone you have not allowed yet, the email is not
lost and nothing goes out. It is held, and an approval card from the agent
arrives in the chat the send came from when you are a member there, otherwise
in your direct chat with the agent. Other people in that chat see that an
email is waiting for your approval, but only you, or someone who manages the
agent, can open the card to see the recipients, subject, and full message, and
only you or they can approve and send it, or decline it. Approving
also remembers your choice for next time: allow those addresses from now on,
allow their whole domain when they share one your team controls, or send just
this once. Declining sends nothing and blocks nothing; to block an address,
use Email Rules. A card left undecided lapses after 7 days and the email is
not sent. A send that includes a blocked or suppressed address is still
refused outright, with no approval card.

That approval is not needed when you send yourself. Ask the agent to draft the
email, open the draft it posts in the chat, and press Send. The review step
lets the email go out for any recipient that is not suppressed, the agent's
own address, or one you have explicitly blocked.

## Suppressed addresses

An address that has hard-bounced or raised a spam complaint is suppressed
across Bolter and cannot be emailed, whatever the rules say.

Source: https://bolter.chat/help/email