openclaw-agentmail-listener

An OpenClaw plugin that listens for incoming emails via AgentMail WebSocket and injects system events so your AI agent can act on them.

What it does

• Registers a background service at gateway startup
• Connects to AgentMail via raw WebSocket (wss://ws.agentmail.to/v0)
• Subscribes to a configured inbox (e.g. nickbot@agentmail.to)
• When a message.received event fires, injects a system event with email metadata (from, subject, preview)
• Wakes the agent immediately via requestHeartbeatNow() so emails are processed right away
• Auto-reconnects with exponential backoff on disconnect
• Keepalive pings every 30 seconds
• Stops cleanly when the gateway shuts down

This is not a channel plugin — it doesn't handle replies. It just triggers system events so the agent notices new emails and can decide what to do (e.g. read the full message via the AgentMail skill and reply).

Installation

openclaw plugins install openclaw-agentmail-listener

Restart the gateway afterwards.

Configuration

Add to your OpenClaw config under plugins.entries:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "openclaw-agentmail-listener": {
        "enabled": true,
        "config": {
          "apiKey": "am_us_your_key_here",
          "inboxId": "yourbot@agentmail.to"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Config fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
apiKey	string	✅	—	Your AgentMail API key
inboxId	string	✅	—	Inbox to subscribe (e.g. nickbot@agentmail.to)
eventTypes	string[]	—	["message.received"]	Event types to subscribe to
sessionKey	string	—	"agent:main:main"	Agent session key for routing system events

System event format

When an email arrives, the plugin injects a system event like:

📧 New email in nickbot@agentmail.to
From: sender@example.com
Subject: Hello there
Preview: This is the first 200 chars of the email body...

The event is keyed with contextKey: cron:agentmail:<messageId> so it is both deduplicated and surfaced in the heartbeat prompt (see How wake works for details).

How wake works

After enqueuing a system event, the plugin calls requestHeartbeatNow() with reason "exec-event". This does two things:

1. Bypasses file gates — the heartbeat fires immediately without requiring HEARTBEAT.md
2. Inspects pending events — the enqueued system event is included in the heartbeat prompt

The cron: prefix on the contextKey ensures the event passes through OpenClaw's hasTaggedCronEvents check, which enables event inspection and renders the email content via buildCronEventPrompt. Without this prefix, the event would be enqueued but silently discarded from the prompt.

Why not reason: "wake"? The "wake" reason bypasses file gates but does not enable shouldInspectPendingEvents in the heartbeat runner, so system events are ignored. "exec-event" enables both.

Important config for proactive delivery:

The heartbeat target must be set to a channel (e.g. "whatsapp", "telegram") or "last" — otherwise the agent processes the email but the response is silently dropped (default target is "none").

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "heartbeat": {
        "every": "1h",
        "target": "whatsapp"
      }
    }
  }
}

Note: The requests-in-flight check is global — if any conversation is active on any channel, the wake is deferred (retries every 1s until the queue clears).

Architecture

• Raw WebSocket — connects directly to wss://ws.agentmail.to/v0 with API key as query param (no SDK dependency for the WebSocket layer)
• Reconnection — exponential backoff (1s → 2s → 4s → ... → 60s max) with ±10% jitter
• Keepalive — sends WebSocket pings every 30 seconds
• In-process wake — uses api.runtime.system.requestHeartbeatNow() with reason: "exec-event" (no HTTP round-trips)
• System events — uses api.runtime.system.enqueueSystemEvent() with cron:-prefixed contextKey to ensure prompt visibility

Dependencies

• ws ^8.18.0 — WebSocket client for Node.js

License

MIT