5.5. Email — The Asynchronous Channel
Covered in detail in 17.1 — revisited from the gateway angle
Email is a platform adapter that operates on a completely different model from the instant chat channels: it uses standard IMAP/SMTP, polling the mailbox on a cycle instead of receiving real-time events over WebSocket like Telegram/Discord. Following the safe-default principle (6.1), senders not on the allowlist are ignored entirely — this behavior is deliberately different from the other chat platforms, because a mailbox usually contains lots of unrelated mail.
Its role in the overall gateway picture
Because it shares the same session store and memory as every other platform, an exchange that starts over email can just as well continue over Telegram or the CLI — the agent recalls the context thanks to situational memory search when switching platforms.
Notes
- Because of its asynchronous nature (cyclic polling, not real-time), email suits workflows that do not need instant replies (as covered in 17.1: email → ticket, rollup reports) rather than fast interactive conversation.
- Always use a dedicated inbox for the agent (repeated from 17.1) — this is a security principle that applies to the gateway as a whole, not just to email.