PrivateEmail connector for Claude

This is a small server that lets Claude read, search, and send email through your Namecheap PrivateEmail mailbox. Once it's deployed, you add it to Claude as a "custom connector" and Claude can use it in conversations.

It exposes 4 tools to Claude:

• search_emails — find emails by sender/subject, or just list recent ones
• read_email — get the full content of one email
• reply_email — reply to a specific email; automatically sends to the right person, keeps the subject threaded ("Re: ..."), and links it to the original message so it shows up in the same conversation in Gmail/Outlook/webmail
• send_email — send a brand-new (non-reply) email

Typical flow: you ask Claude about an email → Claude reads it and drafts a reply right there in the chat for you to review → once you approve, Claude calls reply_email to actually send it. The drafting itself doesn't need a tool — that's just Claude writing text in the conversation, same as always.

Every send/reply also saves a copy into your mailbox's Sent folder, since sending over raw SMTP doesn't do that automatically the way a normal email app does.

Part 1 — Put the code on GitHub

1. Go to github.com and sign in (create a free account if you don't have one).
2. Click the "+" in the top right → "New repository". Name it privateemail-mcp, keep it Private, and click "Create repository".
3. On the new repo page, click "uploading an existing file" and drag in every file from this folder except .env.example isn't required but is fine to include — just don't upload a real .env file with your actual password in it.
4. Commit the files.

Part 2 — Deploy it on Render (free)

1. Go to render.com and sign up (you can sign up with your GitHub account — this also makes Part 3 automatic).
2. Click "New +" → "Web Service".
3. Connect your privateemail-mcp GitHub repo.
4. Fill in:
   • Name: privateemail-mcp (or anything you like)
   • Runtime: Node
   • Build Command: npm install
   • Start Command: npm start
   • Instance Type: Free
5. Under "Environment Variables", add three:
   • EMAIL_USER = your full PrivateEmail address (e.g. you@yourdomain.com)
   • EMAIL_PASS = your mailbox password
   • MCP_SECRET = a long random string you make up yourself (e.g. mash your keyboard for 30 characters). This acts like a password for the connector's web address, so keep it private — don't share it outside this setup.
6. Click "Create Web Service". Render will build and start it — this takes a few minutes the first time.
7. Once it's live, Render shows you a URL like https://privateemail-mcp-xxxx.onrender.com. Visiting that URL in a browser should show "privateemail-mcp is running".

Note on the free tier: Render's free web services go to sleep after 15 minutes of no traffic, and take 30–60 seconds to wake up on the next request. That means the first email search/send after a quiet period might feel slow — that's normal, not an error.

Part 3 — Add it to Claude

1. Your connector's full address is your Render URL plus /mcp/ plus the MCP_SECRET you set. For example: https://privateemail-mcp-xxxx.onrender.com/mcp/your-long-random-string
2. In Claude, go to Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector.
3. Paste that full URL (including the secret) into the server URL field.
4. Leave OAuth Client ID/Secret blank — this connector doesn't use OAuth, the secret is already baked into the URL.
5. Save. Then enable it for a conversation via the "+" button in the chat box.

Security notes

• Your mailbox password is stored only as an environment variable on Render — it's never in the code itself, and I (Claude) never see it.
• Anyone who has your full connector URL (with the secret) could read and send email as you, so treat that URL like a password.
• If you ever want to revoke access, just change MCP_SECRET on Render and update the connector URL in Claude — the old URL stops working immediately.

If something breaks

The IMAP/SMTP logic is written against Namecheap's documented settings (mail.privateemail.com, IMAP port 993, SMTP port 465), but I couldn't test it live from here since I don't have network access to your mailbox. If you hit errors after deploying, paste Render's log output back to me (in your Render dashboard, click the service → "Logs") and I'll help debug it.