techtv-mail — a Cowork connector for [email protected]

techtv-mail — a Cowork connector for [email protected]

This is a small MCP server that lets Claude (Cowork) read and send emailthrough your cPanel-hosted [email protected] mailbox — the same way italready works with your Microsoft 365 and Gmail accounts, just builtspecifically for this mailbox since Anthropic doesn't have a pre-builtconnector for generic IMAP/cPanel mail.

It exposes four tools to Claude:

• list_folders — see what mail folders exist
• search_emails — search a folder by sender, subject, body text, or recency
• get_email — fetch the full text/html of one message
• send_email — send mail as [email protected]

1. Deploy it somewhere that's always on

This needs to live on a small server that's reachable over the publicinternet 24/7 — it can't live on your own computer or in a Claude session,since both go offline. The cheapest, simplest options for something thissmall:

• Railway (railway.app) — free/cheap tier, deploys straight from a zipor a GitHub repo, sets PORT for you automatically.
• Render (render.com) — similar, has a free tier for small services(may sleep when idle on the free tier, which adds a few seconds' delayon the first request after a while).
• A small VPS you already have, if you'd rather run it yourself.

Whichever you pick, the steps are the same shape:

1. Upload this folder (or push it to a GitHub repo and connect that repo).
2. Set it to run npm install then npm start (or node server.js).
3. Set the environment variables below in that host's dashboard —never put real credentials in the code or commit them to git.
4. Once deployed, the host gives you a public URL, e.g.https://techtv-mail-production.up.railway.app.

2. Environment variables to set on the host

To generate a good ACCESS_TOKEN, run this on any machine with Node orjust use a password generator for something like 40+ random characters:

node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('hex'))"

This token becomes part of the server's URL and is the only thing standingbetween the public internet and your mailbox, so treat it exactly like apassword — long, random, never shared, never posted anywhere public.

3. Add it to Cowork as a custom connector

Once deployed, in the Claude app:

1. Go to Customize > Connectors (or click "+" / type "/" in a chat andchoose "Manage connectors").

2. Click + to browse, then Add custom connector.

3. For the server URL, enter:

   https://<your-host-domain>/mcp/<ACCESS_TOKEN>
   

   (both pieces come from your deployment — the domain your host gave you,and the token you set as an environment variable).

4. Leave the OAuth Client ID/Secret fields blank — this server doesn't useOAuth, the token in the URL is the access control.

5. Save/Connect. Claude should now list list_folders, search_emails,get_email, and send_email as available tools whenever this connectoris enabled in a chat.

Security notes

• The mailbox password only ever lives in the host's environment variables— it's never in this code, never typed into a chat with Claude.
• Anyone who obtains the full connector URL (including the token) coulduse these tools against the mailbox, so don't paste that URL anywherepublic (a shared doc, a public repo, a Slack channel others can see).
• If you ever suspect the URL has leaked, generate a new ACCESS_TOKEN,update it on the host, and re-enter the new URL in Cowork's connectorsettings — the old URL stops working immediately.
• This mailbox's actual password should also just live in your passwordmanager as normal; this server needs it once, at deploy time, as anenvironment variable.

Local test (optional, before deploying)

You can run it locally first to make sure your real credentials work:

npm install
MAIL_HOST=mail.techtv.live IMAP_PORT=993 SMTP_PORT=465 \
[email protected] EMAIL_PASS='<real password>' \
ACCESS_TOKEN=test123 PORT=3000 node server.js

Then in another terminal:

curl -s -X POST http://localhost:3000/mcp/test123 \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"test","version":"1.0"}}}'

A successful response looks like a result block naming the server —if instead you get an authentication error, double check EMAIL_PASS andthat IMAP/SMTP access isn't blocked for this mailbox in cPanel.