CLI-Inbox

Added/Fixed:

• Fixed demo message ordering and missing fields
• Ensured CC/BCC default values are always present in demo mode
• Corrected label iteration logic
• Improved star/unstar handling (keeps Starred and All Mail in sync) in demo mode
• Improved trash/delete flow in demo mode and added untrash command
• Null/invalid correct fetch
• Version info command
• Improved help command message
• Alias system improved (argument expansion)
• Account credential validation with retry flow
• Demo mode now shows a clear prompt indicator
• Escapes rendered headers to prevent markup injection issues
• In general A LOT of bug fixes, small improvements, and random stufff, I just can’t list them all, these are the most important ig
• Wrote the README (with AI help)
• Added ‘requirements.txt’
• Added banner and icon
• Created the executable (with Pyinstaller ‘cliinbox.spec’)
• Tested if everything works

Note: Last devlog for this project . This one took some time because it’s mostly fixes, edge cases, and making everything work somehow. Not the most “visible” update, but probably one of the most important for the usability lol. Overall, well, I’m really happy with how this turned out. It became a fully usable CLI email client, I also wanted to do an Outlook support, buuuuuut yeah, I just decided to let it be only for Gmail. It’s not perfect (demo mode is still a bit strange), but it’s definitely something I can actually improve sometime. Also yeah, I learned especially about IMAP weirdness, email stuff, and CLI UI/UX (I discovered Rich, and… I’ve seen Textual, hmmmmm, there is another month for cooking, who knowsss, maybe the next project will be using this framework, ehe, we’ll see :) )

Next:

• SHIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Added/Fixed:

• Draft system implemented (“compose” UI now supports saving drafts when cancelling writing)
• New command ‘edit’ to modify/send drafts
• Compose workflow now lets modifing the To, CC, BCC and Subject fields
• IMAP and demo helpers for saving and deleting drafts
• Command alias system implemented (allows custom shortcuts for commands)
• New commands: ‘alias’ and ‘unalias’
• Command parser now resolves aliases automatically, btw this is the same behaviour as one of my previus project, so yeah :p
• Minor fixes and refactorss

Next:

• BUG FIXINGGG
• Testttttttttttt
• Make an executable
• Shipppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

Added/Fixed:

• Label management system implemented
• Commands to create, delete, rename, set, and unset labels
• Demo mode added (allows running the client without real credentials) (demo.py) (use the --demo flag to start in demo mode) (the email in demo mode is: [email protected])

Note: The label system was actually done in like… 30 minutes, the rest of the time was spent on the demo mode. At first I thought it would be easy but uhm… no. I ended up using AI for a suggestion on how to approach it, and it (chatgpt) suggested using a ‘monkey patch’ technique. I spent some time understanding how that works and then implemented it. It was kinda ok in the end, I only needed some help for the threads inside demo mode. And yeah, it works, but it’s still a bit buggy and weird in some cases AAAAAAAAAAAA… it’s DEFINITELY better using a real accounttt, so please use a real accounttt.

Next:

• Other things that come to my mind?
• BUG FIXINGGG
• Testtttt
• Make an executable
• Shipppppppppp

Added/Fixed:

• Multi account support implemented (keyring stores multiple email accounts (ONLY GMAILLL))
• Commands to add, list, switch, and remove accounts
• Accounts are automatically set as active when used (fixed bugs and stuff with this)
• New settings added: auto_mark_read and default_label
• Settings loader now merges defaults to support updates without breaking anything
• Added date header to emails and normalized displayed dates to the local timezone (beacuse the time in the inbox was broken)
• Minor fixes and adjustments yee

Next:

• Trial mode with a fake email (for testing (for the shipp))
• Custom labels management
• Other stuff, I still need to think…
• BUG FIXINGGG
• Shipppp

Added/Fixed:

• User settings system implemented (settings.py): for now: emails_per_page, download_folder, and signature
• New commands (‘settings’ and ‘setting’) to view and update settings
• Settings automatically loaded on startup and saved when modified
• Inbox pagination now respects the emails_per_page setting
• download_folder setting used as the destination for attachments
• Added support for CC and BCC fields
• Signature automatically appended to composed emails
• Send confirmation now displays attachment details
• Minor fixes: I found out a lot of them, but I used a bit of AI to fix them, ye :/

Next:

• Account management

Added/Fixed:

• Threaded conversation support implemented (fetches IMAP thread IDs and groups related messages) allowing viewing an entire conversation instead of single emails
• Threads supported both in the terminal UI and browser view (‘open’ command)
• Attachment support added (support of attaching files when composing emails)
• Displays attachment list in the email view
• New ‘download’ command to save attachments
• Message dates fix
• Resolve label resolution implemented (see Note)
• Other fixes and stuff AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Note: There was a issue with message IDs when I was implementing threads. I tried to reason through the IMAP behavior myself but, uhm… yeah, in the end I used AI for helpp, it suggested the ‘resolve_label’ function that fixed the label targeting problems. This devlog was the hardesttt, uhhh also the videos take too much of my timeee, it’s like 1 hour just to censor my email everywhere in the recordings bruhh, now I need to study, Math test tomorrow :/

Next:

• Account management
• Settings

Added/Fixed:

• Parses HTML email parts while preserving the raw HTML content + generates a plain text fallback using the ‘html2text’ library
• New ‘open’ command that opens an email (HTML or text) in the system browser (allowing proper viewing of complex HTML emails when the terminal view is baddd)
• Composer modified for reply editor: now prefills quoted content from the original message
• New ‘forward’ command to forward emails (automatically includes original message content)
• Minor internal fixes

Note: Initially I planned to use the w3m CLI browser to render HTML emails directly in the terminal, but nothing was really working properly. In the end I went with two separate approaches: terminal display uses ‘html2text’, and the new ‘open’ command allows viewing the full HTML version in the browser.

Next:

• Attachment download and send
• Threaded email view
• Account management
• Settings

Added/Fixed:

• Commands (‘next’/‘prev’/‘page’) to navigate between pages for now it’s still 20 emails per page (will do settings laterrr)
• Star and unstar emails
• Mark emails as unread
• Delete emails (moves to trash)
• Archive emails DOESN’T WORK FOR SOME REASONN I will fix in the next devlog if I can bruh
• Automatically detects default labels used (this is because of different languages problems)
• Shows “To” field when viewing sent emails
• Starred messages visually highlighted in the inbox + star collumn
• Prevents occasional decode errors when parsing messages
• Fixed some other problems and sidebar now displays as the same height as the email part of the layout

Note: this took some time because of the ‘archive’ problem and some “gmail language” problems, hm (that’s why I added the default labels func and dict)…

Next:

• Display HTML emails properly
• Attachment download and send
• Account management
• Settings

Added/Fixed:

• Email search functionality implemented (search results update the active message list)
• New ‘search’ command
• Labels now integrated directly into the main inbox view layout (responsive for wider terminals)
• Small layout and rendering fixes

Next:

• Star, delete, archive and mark unread actions
• Display HTML emails properly
• Attachment download and send
• Account management
• Settings

Added/Fixed:

• Label support implemented (lists available labels over the inbox, switching between labels using the ‘label’ command + fixed all the million IMAP problems -> that’s because I’m baka dev, the fix was easy, just separating the ‘name’ and ‘display’ in get_labels func…)
• Message flags now fetched from IMAP
• Unread emails are now bold in the UI inbox
• Emails automatically marked as “seen” when opened
• Threaded reply fixes (but still incomplete) (replying to emails preserves parent references)
• Minor rendering improvements in the inbox and other stuff

Next:

• Email search functionality
• Star, delete, archive and mark unread actions
• How can I display HTML emails…?

Added/Fixed:

• Email compose functionality implemented (interactive terminal editor to write new emails (used prompt_toolkit library))
• SMTP integration for sending emails
• Reply support added (automatically fills recipient and subject)
• Message IDs now displayed in inbox listing
• Screen clears before commands for a TUI-like flow

Next:

• Switch between Inbox, Sent, Spam, ecc.
• Read indicators and behaviour
• Email search functionality ye

Added/Fixed:

• Inbox and email UI rendering using the “rich” library (table layout and formatted email display) (ui.py)
• Inbox fetch limit increased (I’ll need to make a setting for this)
• New ‘view’ command to open a specific email by ID
• Email parsing improvements
• Date formatting func

Note: I discovered the “rich” library while working on the UI and… wow, it saves a lot of time for tables. Feels much more polished with very little effort… incredible, why I haven’t discovered it earlier bruhh :/

Next:

• Add compose and send email functionality (with SMTP)
• Switch between Inbox, Sent, Spam, ecc.

Note: This project started as a small experiment to see how practical a CLI email client could be lol, I don’t have much time left so I think I will need to grind it, ehe

Added/Fixed:

• Basic project structure split into modules (main, mail, auth and utils)
• Simple command loop with command parsing (basically the same as one of my previous projects)
• Gmail IMAP integration
• Account setup flow added for first run (Email and password are stored securely using the system keychain (via the ‘keyring’ Python library), and the credentials automatically load on subsequent runs.
• Login using Google App Passwords
• Inbox basic fetching implemented (retrieves the latest emails from the inbox (for testing noww))
• Colored status messages (info, success, error)
• Other minor additions

Next:

• Implement a proper UI to display the inbox
• Add compose and send email functionality (with SMTP)