Messages

Messages shows people, not emails. Each row is a person you’re in conversation with, merged across their addresses, and your conversations with them sit inside the row as topics. A group conversation, where two or more other people took part, is its own row. The quoted line under a name is what they asked you.

mxr messages            # the bands
mxr messages --turn mine
mxr messages person samir@launchpad.example
mxr messages ack THREAD_ID --dry-run

In the web app and the TUI, g m opens Messages.

The web app starts with the conversation list and no conversation open. Choose a person or group to read it. A link to a specific conversation opens that conversation directly. Opening Messages from navigation returns to the list.

Four bands, closest people first

Band	Who is in it	Order
Your turn	Their latest message to you is unanswered	Closest first, then whoever has waited longest past your usual pace with them
Pinned	Up to nine people you pinned with s	Most recent first, with a dot when it’s your turn
Recent	Everyone else you’ve talked with in the last 30 days	Most recent first; “You: …” when you wrote last
Quiet	Done here, or a turn nobody took	Collapsed; a new message brings them back

Closeness comes from your own history with them, counted on your machine: how often you’ve written to each other, how recently, and for how long. Your turn uses the same rule as Now’s People, so the two always agree.

A turn nobody took goes quiet after three times your usual interval with that person, or a week when there’s no history, and never stays longer than 30 days. Nothing in Messages expires; it only goes quiet.

Which threads land here

mxr judges each thread’s shape from who took part:

• One other person wrote in it or you wrote to them: a topic in their row.
• Two or more other people took part: its own row, keyed by the thread, so it stays one row however the CC list changes.
• You were only copied and never wrote in it, or it went to more than 10 people: it goes to Updates, not Messages, and Updates lists it with the reason “copied”. A crowd thread stays in Messages while someone has replied to you in it, with you in To, and you haven’t answered yet.

The 10-recipient line is messages.large_thread_recipients in config. Automated mail and lists never land here.

What a conversation shows

Opening a person shows how you know them (“You’ve written 48 times since 2023. Last: Tuesday.”), every topic with them, group threads as “with Ruth: Pricing copy”, and the selected topic as a conversation.

Read the conversation directly. mxr removes repeated trailing history, signatures and footers when it can identify them. Quoted questions beside inline answers stay together, and forwarded messages keep their attribution and contents. A message with retained context stays expanded.

When something was removed, the message says trimmed: quote, sig (or footer). Select that marker, or press o or v, to see the message as sent. A reply containing only repeated quoted text says (only quoted text). The CLI, TUI, web app and MCP use the same extracted text.

Short messages read like chat. Longer letters lead with the paragraph containing the request when one is identified; otherwise they show the opening paragraph, including the next paragraph if the first is only a greeting. Choose Read all N paragraphs to expand the letter, then Show less to collapse it. Retained inline or forwarded context is shown in full.

If mxr has only a provider preview, it labels that text as incomplete. Choose Check the original to try loading the full message. If it is still unavailable, mxr says so. HTML shown as sent follows your global or saved sender mail appearance choice.

The reply box sits at the bottom, already addressed (“Reply to Samir · Contract renewal”), with reply all on by default in a group.

Got it

. replies with a short acknowledgement in your own words for that person, such as “Hi Samir,\n\nGot it, thanks.\n\nCheers,\nAlex”. The greeting and sign-off are the ones you actually use with them, read from your sent mail; no model writes it. It shows the exact text and counts down for five seconds before sending, and u cancels it.

mxr messages ack THREAD_ID --dry-run   # the exact text, nothing sent
mxr messages ack THREAD_ID             # shows it, counts down, then sends

Got it is a real reply, so it reads fine in every mail client, unlike an emoji reaction. Because it sends mail on one key, mxr guards it:

• It goes only to one person, never to all. It refuses mailing lists, automated and no-reply addresses, and a Reply-To on another domain you have never written to; reply by hand in those cases.
• What goes out is exactly what you saw. If someone writes again, or anything about the reply changes during the countdown, nothing is sent and you are asked to look again. A preview is good for one minute.
• It never sends twice for the same message, even when a send fails half way: if the provider might have taken it, mxr says so and won’t try again, so check Sent. Once you’ve written after their message, there is nothing left to acknowledge.
• It works only on a conversation in Messages. A thread you were only copied on, or one sent to a crowd, is in Updates, and Got it refuses it.

Keys

Key	Does
Enter	Open the person
r / a	Reply / reply all
.	Got it
e	Done here, until they write again
t	Make a to-do from this topic
b	Reply later
s	Pin or unpin the person
c	New topic with this person
[ / ]	Previous / next topic
p	The person’s page
o or v	The message as sent
u	Undo
?	What this mode is for, and its keys

One person, several addresses

People write from work and personal addresses. mxr never merges them on its own, because a wrong merge shows one person’s mail under another. When two addresses you’ve written to share a name, it suggests the merge on the person’s page and in mxr messages merge --suggestions. You merge by hand, with a preview first:

mxr messages merge samir@launchpad.example samir.p@home.example --dry-run
mxr messages merge samir@launchpad.example samir.p@home.example
mxr messages split samir.p@home.example

For scripts and agents

mxr messages --format json returns every band with each row’s topics, preview, closeness and why line. mxr messages person ID --format json returns the page with each message’s text, trimmed flags, source (stored_body or provider_snippet; omitted by older daemons), and has_preserved_context. The bridge serves the same data under /api/v1/mail/people, and the MCP server has mxr_messages, mxr_person and mxr_got_it (which previews unless confirmed with the previewed text).