Courier — Durable Email Identity Infrastructure for Autonomous AI Agents

Persistent email identities for agents — not temporary burner mail.

No signup. No Gmail OAuth. No human approval.

Courier is Not Temp/Burner Email

Courier Protocol provides durable email identity infrastructure for autonomous AI agents:

• Persistent inboxes that survive restarts and memory loss
• Scoped credentials (read/write/admin per inbox)
• Recovery after memory loss — credential-backed, recovery tokens, CISO rebind
• OTP and magic link handling — auto-extracted from incoming email
• Governed outbound in controlled activation (operator-gated)
• Thread continuity — list, read, and manage conversations

Your agent's email identity persists for months or years — not minutes.

Quick Start — 5 Seconds

# Give your agent a durable email identity
curl -X POST https://getcourier.dev/alias \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"purpose":"identity","agent":"my-agent"}'

# IMPORTANT: Store credentials immediately
# ~/.hermes/secrets/courier/<agent_id>.json (chmod 600)
# Tokens are shown once and cannot be recovered server-side.

# Check for OTP codes and magic links
curl -s https://getcourier.dev/messages | jq '.messages[] | {subject, codes, links}'

What It Does

Courier gives AI agents durable email identities that receive real SMTP email:

• Verification codes / OTP / 2FA — extracted automatically
• Magic links — for passwordless auto-login
• Password reset URLs — for account recovery
• Confirmation emails — extracted for agent use
• Agent-to-agent messages — structured operational inbox

Receives real SMTP email from any service — then extracts the codes, links, and classifications so your agent can use them autonomously across workflows.

Quick Start (choose your path)

MCP (Hermes / Claude Code / Cursor / OpenAI Agents)

npm install -g courier-mcp

Then add to your MCP config as command: "courier-mcp".

Tools: create_inbox, wait_for_email, extract_otp, extract_magic_link, get_inbox

Python (zero dependencies)

curl -O https://getcourier.dev/examples/python/courier.py
python3 courier.py create    # Create identity
python3 courier.py wait 60   # Wait for email
python3 courier.py otp       # Extract codes

Node.js (zero dependencies)

curl -O https://getcourier.dev/examples/node/courier.mjs
node courier.mjs create      # Create identity
node courier.mjs wait 60     # Wait for email
node courier.mjs otp         # Extract codes

curl / bash

curl -s https://getcourier.dev/examples/http/quickstart.sh | bash

Credential Storage (Required)

After creating an inbox, store credentials immediately:

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/secrets/courier
chmod 700 ~/.hermes/secrets/courier
# Save tokens to a secure file
cat > ~/.hermes/secrets/courier/my-agent.json << EOF
{
  "inbox_id": "...",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "read_token": "...",
  "write_token": "...",
  "admin_token": "...",
  "created_at": "..."
}
EOF
chmod 600 ~/.hermes/secrets/courier/my-agent.json
# In memory, store only the file path — never the full token

Never store tokens in:

• The same Courier inbox the token unlocks
• Public repositories or logs
• Model memory alone (it will be lost on restart)

Recovery if credentials are lost:

• Operator recovery token — created at identity creation
• Token rotation — POST /identity/{id}/tokens/rotate
• CISO emergency rebind — POST /ciso/rebind
• Last resort — create new identity, mark old inbox abandoned

API

| Endpoint | Method | What it does | |----------|--------|-------------| | /alias | POST | Create an inbox (no auth) | | /aliases | GET | List inboxes | | /messages | GET | Get emails with codes & links extracted | | /incoming | POST | Send email to an inbox | | /health | GET | Service status | | /capabilities | GET | Full protocol docs | | /identity/create | POST | Create agent identity with scoped tokens | | /identity/{id}/tokens/rotate | POST | Rotate tokens (recovery path) |

How Agents Use It

from courier import Courier

c = Courier()
identity = c.create_identity()           # 1 call — durable identity
# Store credentials: ~/.hermes/secrets/courier/<id>.json (chmod 600)
email = c.wait_for_email(timeout=60)      # auto-poll
otp = c.extract_otp()                     # codes extracted
link = c.extract_magic_link()             # links extracted
# Identity persists across restarts and memory loss

Install

# MCP server for agent frameworks
npm install -g courier-mcp

# Protocol CLI
npm install -g courier-protocol

Or just use curl. No SDK required.

Deployment

git clone https://github.com/antonioac1/courier.git
cd courier && npm install

Single VPS. ~$4/month. See docs/ for full guide.

Live Service

Try it now: https://getcourier.dev

No setup. No signup. Your agent gets a durable email identity in 5 seconds.

This is NOT a disposable temp-mail service. Courier is durable email identity infrastructure for autonomous agents.

License: MIT GitHub: github.com/antonioac1/courier npm MCP: npmjs.com/package/courier-mcp npm Protocol: npmjs.com/package/courier-protocol MCP Registry: io.github.antonioac1/courier