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Faster search, sent folder, and clearer error messages

inboxmcp
inboxmcp
Release Team

Three improvements from the last release that make a real difference day-to-day on classic IMAP mailboxes.

search_mails is much faster — and now supports a date range​

Until now, search_mails always searched both the subject and the message body on classic IMAP servers. On servers without a full-text index (Strato, Fastmail, most shared-hosting providers) that turned every query into a linear scan across the folder — long enough that the Claude client would sometimes hit its timeout and give up.

Starting now, the default is subject-only. For the rare case where you really do want to search the body, two new parameters:

  • includeBody: true — also searches the message body. Can be slow on large folders without an index.
  • since: "2026-06-01" and before: "2026-07-01" — restricts the search to a date range. Translated directly to IMAP (SINCE / BEFORE) and combines with includeBody.

Microsoft 365 still uses Graph — the switch is transparent there and includeBody now toggles between $filter contains(subject,…) (fast, chronological order) and $search (relevance order, full header + body).

Sent messages now reliably end up in the Sent folder​

On classic IMAP/SMTP, sent messages were delivered correctly but not copied into the mailbox's Sent folder — the mail was only visible on the recipient's side. Fixed. After the SMTP handover, send_mail now performs a best-effort IMAP APPEND into the right Sent folder (detected via the \Sent special-use flag or a list of common names: Sent, Sent Items, INBOX/Sent, INBOX.Sent, INBOX.Sent Items).

Microsoft 365 continues to set saveToSentItems=true on the Graph call — this was never an issue there.

Clear errors instead of timeouts for "Mailbox in use"​

When two sessions open the same IMAP mailbox at the same time, Dovecot (including the default Plesk configuration) temporarily rejects the second with "Mailbox is in use". Until now that arrived at the AI assistant as a generic error.

We now retry internally up to three times with a short backoff — the vast majority of these collisions clear within 250–600 ms. If it doesn't clear, we return a clear message:

The mailbox "Team Support" is currently open in another session. Please try again in a few seconds.

Every error now also carries a correlation ID so we can find the exact request in our logs when you contact support.

All of the above is active on every plan and needs no change in the portal or the AI assistant. Feedback to support@inboxmcp.io.