Glossary
Use this page when a MailAtlas docs page mentions a term you want to decode.
Core model
Section titled “Core model”Email workspace
Section titled “Email workspace”The local copy of email MailAtlas creates for your agent. It contains clean documents, source email, HTML views, extracted files, exports, receive state, sent-message records, and SQLite lookup.
Use Email Workspace for the storage layout.
Document
Section titled “Document”The clean email record your agent reads. A document contains fields such as subject, sender, timestamps, body_text, source metadata, linked HTML, raw email, and extracted assets.
Use Email Document Schema for the field reference.
body_text
Section titled “body_text”The clean plain-text view of an email body. Agents usually read body_text first because it removes raw MIME structure and can strip repeated boilerplate, forwarded wrappers, footers, invisible characters, and noisy spacing.
Use Clean Email Text for cleaning controls.
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”Extra information stored with a document. Metadata can describe where an email came from, which provider IDs produced it, how the body was cleaned, and what message structure MailAtlas detected.
Provenance
Section titled “Provenance”The source and processing trail for a document. Provenance helps you trace a clean document back to the original file, Gmail message, IMAP folder, or parser result that produced it.
Email inputs
Section titled “Email inputs”A single email message file on disk. Use mailatlas ingest when you already have one or more .eml files locally.
A mailbox archive file on disk that can contain many messages. Use mailatlas ingest when you already have an mbox export.
Gmail receive
Section titled “Gmail receive”The MailAtlas receive path for fetching Gmail messages with the Gmail API and storing them as clean documents in the email workspace.
Use Read Gmail with MailAtlas for the setup flow.
IMAP receive
Section titled “IMAP receive”The MailAtlas receive path for connecting to a live mailbox over IMAP and fetching selected folders into the email workspace.
Use Read Email with IMAP for the setup flow.
Stored files
Section titled “Stored files”A file MailAtlas extracted from an email. Assets include embedded images used by HTML email and regular attachments such as PDFs, spreadsheets, calendar files, and images.
Inline asset
Section titled “Inline asset”An asset embedded in HTML email, often referenced by content ID. Logos, charts, and inline screenshots are common examples.
Attachment
Section titled “Attachment”A regular file attached to an email and extracted into the email workspace.
HTML view
Section titled “HTML view”The normalized HTML representation of an email body when the message contains HTML. It stays linked to the document so agents and exports can use more than plain text when needed. The stored snapshot is preserved source data and remains untrusted; default HTML export creates a separate sanitized view.
Raw email
Section titled “Raw email”The original email bytes stored by MailAtlas, usually as an .eml file. Raw email remains available when you need exact source inspection.
Cleaning and exports
Section titled “Cleaning and exports”Parser cleaning
Section titled “Parser cleaning”The process MailAtlas uses to create body_text. Cleaning can remove or normalize forwarded headers, boilerplate, link-only lines, footers, invisible characters, and repeated whitespace.
Export
Section titled “Export”A JSON, Markdown, HTML, or PDF output produced from a stored document and its linked files.
Use Export Formats for format details.
Markdown bundle
Section titled “Markdown bundle”A Markdown export directory that contains document.md plus an assets/ directory with copied files referenced by the Markdown.
PDF export
Section titled “PDF export”A PDF rendered by local Chrome or Chromium from a sanitized copy of the stored HTML view when available, or from generated HTML based on cleaned text.
Sending
Section titled “Sending”Sent-message record
Section titled “Sent-message record”A local record created when MailAtlas drafts, dry-runs, queues, sends, or fails to send an email. It can include rendered bodies, copied attachments, recipients, provider status, errors, and retry metadata.
Dry run
Section titled “Dry run”A send workflow that validates, renders, and stores a message without contacting an email provider.
Provider
Section titled “Provider”An email service MailAtlas uses for receive or send operations. Examples include Gmail, IMAP, SMTP, and Cloudflare Email Service.
Provider credentials
Section titled “Provider credentials”Secrets used to authenticate with a provider, such as SMTP passwords, Cloudflare API tokens, or Gmail OAuth tokens.
Idempotency key
Section titled “Idempotency key”A caller-provided key used to make retrying sends safer. If the same key already exists, MailAtlas returns the existing sent-message record instead of sending a second message.
Agent interfaces
Section titled “Agent interfaces”The mailatlas command-line interface for ingesting, receiving, listing, reading, exporting, and sending email.
Python API
Section titled “Python API”The MailAtlas Python interface for embedding parsing, receive, document lookup, export, and send workflows in application code.
MCP server
Section titled “MCP server”The optional Model Context Protocol server that exposes local MailAtlas tools to MCP-compatible AI clients over STDIO.