Can people email my AI agent and get a reply?

Yes. The Hermes email gateway connects to a mailbox over IMAP and SMTP, so anyone who emails that address gets a reply from the agent in the same thread.

Do I need a special email provider?

No. Any provider with IMAP and SMTP works. Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft 365 require an app password, which means two-factor authentication must be enabled on that account.

Should I use my own inbox for the agent?

Use a dedicated mailbox. The agent reads what arrives in the account you connect, so a separate address keeps your personal mail out of scope.

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Guide

Connect Email to Your AI Agent

Give your Hermes agent its own mailbox. People email it like they would email a colleague, and it replies in the thread — no app to install, nothing for the sender to learn.

Why Email Is Worth Setting Up

Email is the one channel everybody already has. It is the easiest way to let a customer, a client, or a colleague reach your agent without asking them to join anything. It also handles attachments and long messages far more gracefully than most chat platforms.

The email gateway uses plain IMAP and SMTP, so it works with essentially any provider. Nothing extra needs installing.

Two Different Things People Mean by Email

Worth separating these before you set anything up:

Letting people email the agent and get replies. That is the email gateway on this page.
Letting the agent read, sort and manage an existing mailbox as a task. That is a mail skill the agent uses as a tool, which is a different setup.

Get a Mailbox for the Agent

Create a separate email account for the bot rather than pointing it at your personal inbox. Everything that arrives there gets read by the agent, so a dedicated address keeps the boundary clean.

For Gmail, you will need an app password rather than your normal password, which means two-factor authentication has to be on for that account. Outlook and Microsoft 365 work the same way. Most other providers either use an app password or allow the account password directly — check your provider's IMAP settings page.

Configure Hermes

Run the guided setup from the Web Terminal and choose Email:

hermes gateway setup

Or configure it manually:

[email protected]
EMAIL_PASSWORD=abcd efgh ijkl mnop
EMAIL_IMAP_HOST=imap.gmail.com
EMAIL_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com

The password field takes the app password, spaces and all, if your provider issued one. Swap the hosts for your own provider's — Outlook, Fastmail, Zoho and the rest all publish theirs.

Control Who Can Email It

An open mailbox will eventually receive spam, and every message costs you model usage. Restrict who the agent answers to a known list of senders unless you have a deliberate reason to accept mail from anyone. If you do want it open to the public, expect to filter and keep an eye on usage.

Test It

Send the agent an email from a different account and wait for the reply. If nothing arrives, check the mailbox directly — if your message is sitting unread in the inbox, the IMAP side is connected but the agent is not processing it. If your message is not there at all, the mail never arrived, and the problem is with the provider or the address rather than the agent.

Troubleshooting

Login fails on Gmail. You are almost certainly using the account password. Turn on two-factor authentication and generate an app password.
It reads mail but replies never arrive. IMAP is working and SMTP is not. Check the SMTP host and that your provider allows sending from that client.
Replies land in spam. Send from a domain you control with sensible mail records rather than a free provider, if the agent emails people who do not know it.
It answers messages you did not want it to. Tighten the allowed-sender list.

Need a Hand?

Contact support from your dashboard and we will set the mailbox up on your instance. Never send us the password in chat — we will tell you where to put it.