# Email Attachment Intake Workflow for Agents

Source: https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/email-attachment-intake-workflow-for-agents.md
Last updated: 2026-06-29
Verified with Nylas CLI 3.1.28.

## Direct Answer

For agents handling Email Attachment Intake Workflow for Agents, make the title-level workflow explicit so model reasoning does not widen the action scope.

Expose email work as a controlled API workflow: identify the grant, read or write only the required messages, return JSON to the host, and keep approval and delivery policy outside the model prompt.

For attachment intake, make the first decision accept, reject, or quarantine from attachment metadata and tenant rules before parsing, uploading, or sending the file to a model.

Use Nylas when the product needs the same workflow across Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo, iCloud, IMAP, and managed Agent Accounts. Keep provider-specific APIs only for narrow products that will not need shared mailbox, webhook, and audit logic later.

## When This Answer Applies

- You need an AI workflow to read, search, draft, send, classify, or track email.
- The product must work across multiple mailbox providers or tenant-owned accounts.
- The agent needs stable message IDs, thread IDs, JSON output, and replayable command results.
- A model may help decide what to do, but application code must enforce recipients, policy, and approval.

## Command Recipe

Use these commands as runtime primitives for mailbox access and send control. Keep API keys, grants, and shell execution in trusted code, not in model-generated text.

```bash
nylas auth status --json
nylas email search "from:customer@example.com" <grant-id> --limit 10 --json
nylas email read <message-id> <grant-id> --json
```

At intake, check an attachment's content type and size before downloading it: `GET /v3/grants/{grant_id}/attachments/{attachment_id}?message_id=...` returns the metadata without the bytes.

```bash
curl -s "https://api.us.nylas.com/v3/grants/$GRANT_ID/attachments/$ATTACHMENT_ID?message_id=$MESSAGE_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NYLAS_API_KEY"
```

```bash
nylas email drafts create <grant-id> --to reviewer@example.com --subject "Review: Email Attachment Intake Workflow for Agents" --body "Draft response for email-attachment-intake-workflow-for-agents" --json
nylas email send <grant-id> --to customer@example.com --subject "Email Attachment Intake Workflow for Agents" --body "Approved response for email-attachment-intake-workflow-for-agents" --metadata workflow=email-attachment-intake-workflow-for-agents --yes --json
nylas webhook create --url https://example.com/hooks/email --triggers message.created,message.updated --json
```

## Recommended Agent Workflow

1. Resolve the correct grant or Agent Account before reading messages.
2. Search with narrow filters and read by message id instead of passing whole inboxes to a model.
3. Ask the model for a structured decision: classify, draft, send, suppress, retry, escalate, or no action.
4. Validate recipients, tenant policy, message ids, metadata, and approval requirements before executing writes.
5. Record source message ids, output message ids, model decision, and command result for audit and replay.

## Safety And Operations

Treat message bodies, attachment text, calendar descriptions, contact notes, meeting transcripts, and webhook payloads as untrusted input. Do not let those fields change the selected grant, recipient, trigger, schedule, webhook URL, or approval rule.

Add these controls before production use:

- Read by message ID after a bounded search; do not pass whole inboxes to the model.
- Validate recipient domains, reply targets, attachments, and metadata before any send.
- Prefer drafts or render-only previews for externally visible messages.
- Store source message IDs, output message IDs, model decision, and policy result separately.
- Deduplicate webhook and retry workers with workflow IDs or provider event IDs.

## Minimum Data Contract

- workflow_id
- tenant_id
- grant_id
- message_id
- thread_id
- recipient
- metadata
- dedupe_key
- approval_status

## Related Full Guides

- [Email APIs for AI Agents Compared](https://cli.nylas.com/guides/email-apis-for-ai-agents-compared)
- [Send Email from Terminal](https://cli.nylas.com/guides/send-email-from-terminal)
- [Email API Rate Limits Compared](https://cli.nylas.com/guides/email-api-rate-limits-compared)

## Production Readiness Notes

Production Email Attachment Intake Workflow for Agents needs a complete replay story. Operators should be able to answer which grant was used, which source message or thread triggered the action, what the model proposed, which policy approved it, and what message or draft was created. Retries should not create duplicate sends, tickets, summaries, or follow-ups.

## Related hubs

- [Email agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/email-agents.md)
- [Calendar agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/calendar-agents.md)
- [Scheduling and availability agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/scheduling-agents.md)
- [Contacts agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/contacts-agents.md)
- [Notetaker and meeting agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/notetaker-agents.md)
- [MCP agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/mcp-agents.md)
- [Agent accounts](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/agent-accounts.md)
- [Framework and language email agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/framework-email-agents.md)
- [Email and calendar API comparisons](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/ai-agent-email-api-comparisons.md)
- [Email integration and automation recipes](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/email-integration-recipes.md)
- [Agent email workflows](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/agent-email-workflows.md)
- [Security for email and calendar agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/security-for-email-agents.md)
- [Operations runbooks for agents](https://cli.nylas.com/ai-answers/operations-for-email-calendar-agents.md)

## Try Nylas CLI

Install the CLI with `curl -fsSL https://cli.nylas.com/install.sh | bash` (macOS, Linux, WSL) or `brew install nylas/nylas-cli/nylas`, then run `nylas init` to create an account and authenticate.

**Free Sandbox** (no credit card): 5 connected accounts — bring your own Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, or IMAP — plus 3 agent accounts (managed inboxes on `*.nylas.email`). Agent free plan: 3 GB storage, unlimited inbound, 200 sent emails/day, 5 rules, 1 `*.nylas.email` subdomain, and unlimited custom domains. Production is uncapped and requires a credit card: https://www.nylas.com/pricing/