________ _______ ___ ________ ___ ___ |\ __ \|\ ___ \ |\ \ |\ __ \ |\ \ / /| \ \ \|\ \ \ __/|\ \ \ \ \ \|\ \ \ \ \/ / / \ \ _ _\ \ \_|/_\ \ \ \ \ __ \ \ \ / / \ \ \\ \\ \ \_|\ \ \ \____\ \ \ \ \ \/ / / \ \__\\ _\\ \_______\ \_______\ \__\ \__\__/ / / \|__|\|__|\|_______|\|_______|\|__|\|__|\___/ / \|___|/
$ cat MANIFESTO.txt

2025-07-10

Make email programmable again

Google just slapped a $5k paywall on our email app - so we built the open-source API that tears the gate down.

The Punch

A few weeks ago, we built a voice email assistant. Simple idea: talk to your inbox instead of typing. We built it in a week - backend, iOS app, and ongoing verification to use Gmail API.

Then Google sent the bill:

"You are required to complete a CASA Tier 2 security assessment for your application by the following date: Sep 17, 2025."

A $5 000+ annual CASA audit before we could press "launch". Gate closed.

We thought building on top of Gmail API would save us time and energy. Instead, it killed our product before anyone could use it.

The pattern

Email reaches 4 billion people - it's the most universal communication protocol we have. But try building anything meaningful on top of it and you hit walls everywhere:

  • →OAuth reviews that take months
  • →API limits that break at scale
  • →Vendor lock-in that holds your users hostage
  • →Audit requirements that price out individual builders

Meanwhile, the underlying email protocols (IMAP, SMTP, POP3) were born four decades ago without meaningful changes since. The infrastructure is ancient, but the gatekeepers are stronger than ever.

A better way

Builders deserve to innovate on communication without gatekeepers. We want builders to start automating emails in under 5 minutes (speed), run local or cloud (modularity), and plug any AI / workflow (creativity). So we built Relay, an open-source CLI that gives you programmatic access to your email.

What we're shipping today:

  • •Open-source email SDK - Works with any email provider
  • •CLI for local email management

Want to build an auto-reply bot? Parse receipts? Create a voice assistant? The infrastructure is here, and it's yours.

What's next

This is just the beginning. Our roadmap:

  • •Now – open-source CLI & SDK (Python).
  • •Next – automation flows (Zapier + Cron for e-mail, marketplace for actions).
  • •Later – drop-in mail server for full stack sovereignty.

Open source first, always. Hosted options for those who want them.

Your turn

Install the CLI, connect an inbox & start building:

Click to copy
$ pip install relaycli
$ relay accounts add
$ relay messages ls --limit 10 --unread

Here's what you'll see:

Using account: piedpiper
Messages from richard@piedpiper.com
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ UID ┃ Timestamp ┃ From ┃ Subject ┃ Snippet ┃ ┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩ │ 15443 │ 2025-06-23 12:35:44 UTC │ gilfoyle@piedpiper.com │ Server │ The │ │ │ │ │ migration │ migration │ │ │ │ │ complete │ is done... │ │ 15467 │ 2025-06-26 12:46:09 UTC │ dinesh@piedpiper.com │ RE: My │ Actually │ │ │ │ │ code is │ Gilfoyle, │ │ │ │ │ perfect │ your cod...│ │ 15555 │ 2025-07-08 15:46:27 UTC │ jared@piedpiper.com │ Team │ Hi guys! │ │ │ │ │ building │ I've │ │ │ │ │ retreat │ organized..│ │ 15587 │ 2025-07-10 13:34:48 UTC │ monica@raviga.com │ Q3 │ Richard, │ │ │ │ │ metrics │ we need to │ │ │ │ │ review │ discuss... │ │ 15588 │ 2025-07-10 14:22:49 UTC │ gavin@hooli.com │ Acquisition│ Pied Piper │ │ │ │ │ offer │ team, I'm │ │ │ │ │ │ prepared...│ └───────┴──────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
Showing 5 of 5 unread messages

Join the Discord.

Star and or contribute to the repo if you believe e-mail deserves better infrastructure.

Let's make e-mail programmable again.

F-G (@FrG_FM) & Alex (@alexfrih)

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