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+# SimbaRAG Email Integration
+
+## What This Is
+
+A personal RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) conversational AI system that answers questions about your life through document search, budget tracking, meal planning, and now email inbox analytics. It ingests documents from Paperless-NGX, YNAB transactions, Mealie recipes, and (new) IMAP email to provide intelligent, context-aware responses.
+
+## Core Value
+
+Personal information retrieval through natural conversation - ask about any aspect of your documented life (papers, finances, meals, emails) and get accurate, context-aware answers drawn from your own data sources.
+
+## Requirements
+
+### Validated
+
+- ✓ OIDC authentication via Authelia with PKCE flow — existing
+- ✓ RBAC using LDAP groups (lldap_admin for admin privileges) — existing
+- ✓ Multi-user conversations with persistent message history — existing
+- ✓ RAG document search from Paperless-NGX documents — existing
+- ✓ Multi-agent LangChain orchestration with tool calling — existing
+- ✓ YNAB budget integration (budget summary, transactions, spending insights) — existing
+- ✓ Mealie meal planning integration (shopping lists, meal plans, recipes) — existing
+- ✓ Tavily web search for real-time information — existing
+- ✓ Streaming SSE chat responses for real-time feedback — existing
+- ✓ Vector embeddings in ChromaDB for similarity search — existing
+- ✓ JWT session management with refresh tokens — existing
+- ✓ Local LLM support via llama-server with OpenAI fallback — existing
+
+### Active
+
+- [ ] IMAP email ingestion for inbox analytics
+- [ ] Multi-account email support (multiple IMAP connections)
+- [ ] Admin-only email access (configuration and queries)
+- [ ] Scheduled email sync (configurable interval)
+- [ ] Auto-purge emails older than 30 days from vector index
+- [ ] Index email metadata: subject, body text, sender information
+- [ ] Read-only email analysis (no modification/deletion of emails)
+- [ ] Email-aware LangChain tools (who's emailing, what subjects, subscription patterns)
+
+### Out of Scope
+
+- Email actions (mark read/unread, delete, archive) — read-only analytics only
+- SMTP sending capabilities — inbox ingestion only
+- Email attachment indexing — too complex for v1, focus on text content
+- Real-time email sync — scheduled sync sufficient, reduces server load
+- POP3 support — IMAP provides better state management
+- Non-admin email access — privacy-sensitive feature, admin-only
+
+## Context
+
+**Existing Architecture:**
+- Python/Quart async backend with React frontend
+- Tortoise ORM with PostgreSQL for relational data
+- ChromaDB for vector embeddings (persistent storage)
+- Blueprint-based API organization with `/api/rag`, `/api/conversation`, `/api/user`
+- LangChain agent with `@tool` decorated functions for extended capabilities
+- Existing integrations: Paperless-NGX (documents), YNAB (finance), Mealie (meals), Tavily (web)
+
+**Email Use Cases:**
+- "What emails did I get this week?"
+- "Who has been emailing me most frequently?"
+- "Show me subscription emails I should unsubscribe from"
+- "What topics am I being emailed about?"
+- Inbox pattern recognition and analytics through natural language
+
+**Privacy Considerations:**
+- Email is highly personal - admin-only access prevents exposure to other users
+- 30-day retention window limits data exposure and storage growth
+- Self-hosted deployment keeps email content on user's infrastructure
+
+## Constraints
+
+- **Tech Stack**: Python/Quart backend — must use existing framework and patterns
+- **Storage**: ChromaDB vector store — email embeddings live alongside documents
+- **Authentication**: LDAP group-based RBAC — email features gated to `lldap_admin` group
+- **Deployment**: Docker Compose self-hosted — no cloud email storage or processing
+- **Retention**: 30-day sliding window — automatic purge of older emails from index
+- **Performance**: Scheduled sync only — avoid real-time polling overhead on mail servers
+
+## Key Decisions
+
+| Decision | Rationale | Outcome |
+|----------|-----------|---------|
+| IMAP only (no SMTP) | User wants inbox analytics, not sending capabilities | — Pending |
+| Admin-only access | Email is privacy-sensitive, limit to trusted admins | — Pending |
+| 30-day retention | Balance utility with privacy/storage concerns | — Pending |
+| Scheduled sync | Reduces server load vs real-time polling | — Pending |
+| No attachment indexing | Complexity vs value, focus on text content first | — Pending |
+| ChromaDB for emails | Reuse existing vector store, no new infrastructure | — Pending |
+
+---
+*Last updated: 2026-02-04 after initialization*