[MlMt] Local Email Client & AI Agents

[Bill Cole]

On 2026-05-31 at 11:21:02 UTC-0400 (Sun, 31 May 2026 16:21:02 +0100)
Matthias via mailmate <mailmate at lists.freron.com>
is rumored to have said:

> on Sun, 31 May 2026 13:36:57 +0200
> Robert M. Münch <robert.muench at saphirion.com> whispered:
>
>> I want to get some best practices and thoughts on the future of local
>> email clients, which I much prefer to using a web mailer, and on the
>> deeper integration of AI agents as the universal assistant into 
>> almost
>> any application. However, most of these applications are web-based.
>
> Mailmate is a IMAP-mail client - imho the best and should't do 
> anything
> else.

+1

It is also extremely open in its core data format, so an external tool 
can easily access the whole raw data set.

It is best to keep tools well-defined, with an easily defined and 
confined scope. I will die on this hill...


> If Benny implements stuff like that, I'll delete MM and install Claws
> Mail on my Mac as well.

I would certainly go on the hunt for a new MUA if MM were to make it 
difficult to avoid and ignore any LLM integration.

I understand that Benny may feel it necessary to enable users to corrupt 
their email with statistically contrived text, as people seem to like 
that, but I hope he does not fall victim to the hogwash hype of using 
LLMs to write software.

To understand that risk, one need only look at the disaster that came to 
the Rsync project when Tridge took on his new coding partner, Claude: 
lots of commits, lots of really weird new bugs, and a new test 
collection that no one understands. And a tool that was essentially 
complete, stable, and universally relied-upon has lost trust to the 
point where OS distros are pegging it at the last pre-Claude version and 
looking at alternative implementations.

Some people consider LLMs to be intrinsically dangerous to have any 
contact with. I'm not *quite* that superstitious but I do see the risks. 
I prefer to let others take them, if they are eager.


-- 
  Bill Cole
  bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
  (AKA @grumpybozo at toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
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