> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://pomeroy.app/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Find anything in your email with an AI assistant

> Find any email by asking. Pomeroy lets your AI assistant search your Apple Mail on your Mac by sender, subject, and what a message says. It cannot send, delete, or move a single message.

Switch Mail on in Pomeroy and you can ask your assistant to find a message: it
searches your mail on your Mac by sender and subject, and searches what
messages actually say through an index Pomeroy builds and keeps on your Mac. It
reads back what it finds and pulls out the fact you asked for. It cannot send,
reply, forward, delete, or move anything, or even mark a message read.

Uses [Mail](/docs/apps/mail).

## How do I search my mail by asking?

Describe what you are looking for and let your assistant do the searching. It
can search by sender and subject, search message bodies through an index built
on your Mac, list your mailboxes with their unread counts, and read any message
it finds. You do not have to know which mailbox the message is in.

The best asks are the ones you would put to a person: the thing you half
remember, and what you want out of it. The message gets found and the question
gets answered, rather than a list of results coming back for you to open one at
a time.

```text theme={null}
Find the flight confirmation from March and tell me the times.
Search my mail for the plumber's invoice and tell me the total.
Show me my most recent job application emails.
What unread mail do I have?
```

## What if I cannot remember who sent it?

Search what the message says instead. Body search runs through an index Pomeroy
builds and keeps on your Mac, so it covers the words inside a message rather
than only its subject line and its sender. A booking reference or a street name
is usually enough.

That index is built on your Mac and stays there. Pomeroy reads your mail
locally and hands the answer to the assistant you set up; nothing from your
mailbox is sent to Pomeroy, because there is no Pomeroy server for it to be
sent to.

```text theme={null}
Read me the latest email from the school and pull out the dates.
Which mailbox has the most unread messages?
```

<Tip>
  The first body search on a large mailbox builds the index and is slow. Every
  later one answers from it. [How the index
  works](/docs/apps/mail#the-content-index).
</Tip>

## Is it safe to let an assistant search my inbox?

As safe as pasting the same email into a chat, because that is close to what
happens. Mail starts switched off, so nothing is read until you switch it on,
and you can switch it off again at any moment.

What your assistant reads becomes part of your conversation with it, so ask
about the mail you would be comfortable pasting in by hand. Pomeroy is an
independent app, built by its founder, and not made by Anthropic or by whoever
makes your assistant.

## Finding the message you cannot name

<Steps>
  <Step title="Describe it the way you remember it.">
    Say what the message was about and what you want from it, in one sentence.
    "The flight confirmation from March" is enough to go on.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add a word from inside the message.">
    If nothing comes back, give it a word that would be inside the message: a
    booking reference, an amount, a street name. Body search covers those.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Ask for the fact you actually need.">
    Ask for the answer, not the email: the times, the total, the address. The
    message is read and you are told the part you wanted.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Open Mail and check nothing moved.">
    Nothing was marked read, moved, or deleted, because Pomeroy has no action
    that could. The search leaves your mailbox as you left it.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## What Pomeroy will not do here

* Send a message, a reply, or a forward.
* Delete, move, or archive mail.
* Mark anything read or unread.

Searching your mail leaves it exactly as you left it. If you want a reply
written, your assistant can draft the words and you send them yourself from
Mail.