Inbox Zero

What is Inbox Zero about?

Inbox Zero is an AI‑powered personal assistant that helps you manage your email faster. It automatically categorizes senders, suggests replies in your own style, tracks messages that need a response, and offers analytics on your email habits.

How to use Inbox Zero?

1. Deploy – Deploy the app via Vercel, Docker, or locally with pnpm/Turbo.
2. Configure – Set required environment variables (OAuth credentials, database URL, Redis, LLM provider, etc.) in the .env file.
3. Connect your mailbox – Authorize Google or Microsoft accounts to grant the app access to Gmail/Outlook.
4. Interact – Use the web UI to view AI‑generated draft replies, set cursor rules in plain English, unsubscribe or block bulk emails, and monitor reply‑tracking status.
5. Customize – Choose your LLM (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, etc.) on the Settings page and tweak premium features if needed.

Key Features of Inbox Zero

• AI Personal Assistant – Generates draft replies in your tone and organizes conversations.
• Cursor Rules – Write plain‑english rules that dictate how the AI should handle incoming mail.
• Reply Zero Tracker – Shows which emails you still need to answer and which are awaiting replies.
• Smart Categories – Automatic sender classification.
• Bulk Unsubscriber – One‑click unsubscribe and archive of never‑read newsletters.
• Cold Email Blocker – Filters and blocks unsolicited cold outreach.
• Email Analytics – Visualizes response times, email volume trends, and productivity metrics.
• Multi‑Provider OAuth – Supports Google and Microsoft accounts.
• Flexible LLM Integration – Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, Groq, Ollama, etc.
• Docker & Vercel Support – Easy deployment options.

Use Cases

• Busy Professionals – Reduce time spent reading and replying to emails.
• Sales Teams – Quickly draft personalized outreach replies and block cold spam.
• Customer Support – Auto‑draft responses and track pending tickets via email.
• Developers – Self‑host to integrate with internal tools or CI pipelines.
• Privacy‑Conscious Users – Run the app on personal infrastructure, controlling all data.

FAQ

Q: Do I need to pay for any services? A: The core app is open source and free. Premium features require a paid subscription or making yourself an admin in the .env file.

Q: Which email providers are supported? A: Google Gmail (via OAuth) and Microsoft Outlook/Exchange are supported.

Q: Can I run the app locally without Docker? A: Yes. After cloning the repo, run pnpm install, configure .env, and start with turbo dev or pnpm run dev.

Q: What LLMs can I use? A: OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock (Anthropic), Google Gemini, Groq, and local Ollama models are supported. Set the appropriate env vars.

Q: How do I receive real‑time email notifications? A: Set up Google Pub/Sub, create a topic and subscription, and configure GOOGLE_PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME and GOOGLE_PUBSUB_VERIFICATION_TOKEN in .env. The app provides a webhook endpoint for push notifications.

Q: Is there a Docker image available? A: Yes. Build with docker build --build-arg NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL="https://your-domain.com" -t inbox-zero -f docker/Dockerfile.prod . and run with the required environment variables.

Mission

To help you spend less time in your inbox, so you can focus on what matters.

Features

• AI Personal Assistant: Organizes your inbox and pre-drafts replies in your tone and style.
• Cursor Rules for email: Explain in plain English how your AI should handle your inbox.
• Reply Zero: Track emails to reply to and those awaiting responses.
• Smart Categories: Automatically categorize every sender.
• Bulk Unsubscriber: One-click unsubscribe and archive emails you never read.
• Cold Email Blocker: Auto‑block cold emails.
• Email Analytics: Track your activity and trends over time.

Learn more in our docs.

Feature Screenshots

AI Assistant	Reply Zero
Gmail client	Bulk Unsubscriber

Demo Video

Built with

• Next.js
• Tailwind CSS
• shadcn/ui
• Prisma
• Upstash
• Turborepo

Star History

Feature Requests

To request a feature open a GitHub issue, or join our Discord.

Getting Started for Developers

We offer a hosted version of Inbox Zero at https://getinboxzero.com. To self-host follow the steps below.

Setup

Here's a video on how to set up the project. It covers the same steps mentioned in this document. But goes into greater detail on setting up the external services.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18.0.0
• pnpm >= 8.6.12
• Docker desktop (recommended but optional)

Make sure you have the above installed before starting.

The external services that are required are (detailed setup instructions below):

• Google OAuth
• Google PubSub

Updating .env file: secrets

Create your own .env file from the example supplied:

cp apps/web/.env.example apps/web/.env
cd apps/web
pnpm install

Set the environment variables in the newly created .env. You can see a list of required variables in: apps/web/env.ts.

The required environment variables:

• AUTH_SECRET -- can be any random string (try using openssl rand -hex 32 for a quick secure random string)

• EMAIL_ENCRYPT_SECRET -- Secret key for encrypting OAuth tokens (try using openssl rand -hex 32 for a secure key)

• EMAIL_ENCRYPT_SALT -- Salt for encrypting OAuth tokens (try using openssl rand -hex 16 for a secure salt)

• NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL -- The URL where your app is hosted (e.g., http://localhost:3000 for local development or https://yourdomain.com for production).

• INTERNAL_API_KEY -- A secret key for internal API calls (try using openssl rand -hex 32 for a secure key)

• UPSTASH_REDIS_URL -- Redis URL from Upstash. (can be empty if you are using Docker Compose)

• UPSTASH_REDIS_TOKEN -- Redis token from Upstash. (or specify your own random string if you are using Docker Compose)

When using Vercel with Fluid Compute turned off, you should set MAX_DURATION=300 or lower. See Vercel limits for different plans here.

Updating .env file with Google OAuth credentials:

• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID -- Google OAuth client ID. More info here
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET -- Google OAuth client secret. More info here

Go to Google Cloud. Create a new project if necessary.

Create new credentials:

1. If the banner shows up, configure consent screen (if not, you can do this later)

   1. Click the banner, then Click Get Started.
   2. Choose a name for your app, and enter your email.
   3. In Audience, choose External
   4. Enter your contact information
   5. Agree to the User Data policy and then click Create.
   6. Return to APIs and Services using the left sidebar.

2. Create new credentials:

   1. Click the +Create Credentials button. Choose OAuth Client ID.
   2. In Application Type, Choose Web application
   3. Choose a name for your web client
   4. In Authorized JavaScript origins, add a URI and enter http://localhost:3000
   5. In Authorized redirect URIs enter:
   • http://localhost:3000/api/auth/callback/google
   • http://localhost:3000/api/google/linking/callback
   6. Click Create.
   7. A popup will show up with the new credentials, including the Client ID and secret.

3. Update .env file:

   1. Copy the Client ID to GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID
   2. Copy the Client secret to GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET

4. Update scopes

   1. Go to Data Access in the left sidebar (or click link above)
   2. Click Add or remove scopes
   3. Copy paste the below into the Manually add scopes box:

   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.basic
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts
   

   4. Click Update
   5. Click Save in the Data Access page.

5. Add yourself as a test user

   1. Go to Audience
   2. In the Test users section, click +Add users
   3. Enter your email and press Save

Updating .env file with Microsoft OAuth credentials:

• MICROSOFT_CLIENT_ID -- Microsoft OAuth client ID
• MICROSOFT_CLIENT_SECRET -- Microsoft OAuth client secret

Go to Microsoft Azure Portal. Create a new Azure Active Directory app registration:

1. Navigate to Azure Active Directory

2. Go to "App registrations" in the left sidebar or search it in the searchbar

3. Click "New registration"

   1. Choose a name for your application
   2. Under "Supported account types" select "Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Azure AD directory - Multitenant) and personal Microsoft accounts (e.g. Skype, Xbox)"
   3. Set the Redirect URI:
      • Platform: Web
      • URL: http://localhost:3000/api/auth/callback/microsoft
   4. Click "Register"
   5. In the "Manage" menu click "Authentication (Preview)"
   6. Add the Redirect URI: http://localhost:3000/api/outlook/linking/callback

4. Get your credentials:

   1. The "Application (client) ID" shown is your MICROSOFT_CLIENT_ID
   2. To get your client secret:
      • Click "Certificates & secrets" in the left sidebar
      • Click "New client secret"
      • Add a description and choose an expiry
      • Click "Add"
      • Copy the secret Value (not the ID) - this is your MICROSOFT_CLIENT_SECRET

5. Configure API permissions:

   1. In the "Manage" menu click "API permissions" in the left sidebar

   2. Click "Add a permission"

   3. Select "Microsoft Graph"

   4. Select "Delegated permissions"

   5. Add the following permissions:

      • openid
      • profile
      • email
      • User.Read
      • offline_access
      • Mail.ReadWrite
      • Mail.Send
      • Mail.ReadBasic
      • Mail.Read
      • Mail.Read.Shared
      • MailboxSettings.ReadWrite
      • Contacts.ReadWrite

   6. Click "Add permissions"

   7. Click "Grant admin consent" if you're an admin

6. Update your .env file with the credentials:

   MICROSOFT_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id_here
   MICROSOFT_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret_here
   

Updating .env file with LLM parameters

You need to set an LLM, but you can use a local one too:

• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• AWS Bedrock Anthropic
• Google Gemini
• Groq Llama 3.3 70B
• Ollama (local)

For the LLM, you can use Anthropic, OpenAI, or Anthropic on AWS Bedrock. You can also use Ollama by setting the following enviroment variables:

OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/api
NEXT_PUBLIC_OLLAMA_MODEL=phi3

Note: If you need to access Ollama hosted locally and the application is running on Docker setup, you can use http://host.docker.internal:11434/api as the base URL. You might also need to set OLLAMA_HOST to 0.0.0.0 in the Ollama configuration file.

You can select the model you wish to use in the app on the /settings page of the app.

If you are using local ollama, you can set it to be default:

DEFAULT_LLM_PROVIDER=ollama

If this is the case you must also set the ECONOMY_LLM_PROVIDER environment variable.

Redis and Postgres

We use Postgres for the database. For Redis, you can use Upstash Redis or set up your own Redis instance.

You can run Postgres & Redis locally using docker-compose

docker-compose up -d # -d will run the services in the background

Running the app

To run the migrations:

pnpm prisma migrate dev

To run the app locally for development (slower):

pnpm run dev

Or from the project root:

turbo dev

To build and run the app locally in production mode (faster):

pnpm run build
pnpm start

Open http://localhost:3000 to view the app in your browser.

Premium

Many features are available only to premium users. To upgrade yourself, make yourself an admin in the .env: ADMINS=hello@gmail.com Then upgrade yourself at: http://localhost:3000/admin.

Set up push notifications via Google PubSub to handle emails in real time

Follow instructions here.

1. Create a topic
2. Create a subscription
3. Grant publish rights on your topic

Set env var GOOGLE_PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME. When creating the subscription select Push and the url should look something like: https://www.getinboxzero.com/api/google/webhook?token=TOKEN or https://abc.ngrok-free.app/api/google/webhook?token=TOKEN where the domain is your domain. Set GOOGLE_PUBSUB_VERIFICATION_TOKEN in your .env file to be the value of TOKEN.

To run in development ngrok can be helpful:

ngrok http 3000
# or with an ngrok domain to keep your endpoint stable (set `XYZ`):
ngrok http --domain=XYZ.ngrok-free.app 3000

And then update the webhook endpoint in the Google PubSub subscriptions dashboard.

To start watching emails visit: /api/watch/all

Watching for email updates

Set a cron job to run these: The Google watch is necessary. Others are optional.

  "crons": [
    {
      "path": "/api/watch/all",
      "schedule": "0 1 * * *"
    },
    {
      "path": "/api/resend/summary/all",
      "schedule": "0 16 * * 1"
    },
    {
      "path": "/api/reply-tracker/disable-unused-auto-draft",
      "schedule": "0 3 * * *"
    }
  ]

Here are some easy ways to run cron jobs. Upstash is a free, easy option. I could never get the Vercel vercel.json. Open to PRs if you find a fix for that.

Docker Build Instructions

When building the Docker image, you must specify your NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL as a build argument. This is because Next.js embeds NEXT_PUBLIC_* variables at build time, not runtime.

Building the Docker image

# For production with your custom domain
docker build \
  --build-arg NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL="https://your-domain.com" \
  -t inbox-zero \
  -f docker/Dockerfile.prod .

# For local development (default)
docker build -t inbox-zero -f docker/Dockerfile.prod .

Running the container

After building, run the container with your runtime secrets:

docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e DATABASE_URL="your-database-url" \
  -e AUTH_SECRET="your-auth-secret" \
  -e GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your-google-client-id" \
  -e GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your-google-client-secret" \
  # ... other runtime environment variables
  inbox-zero

Important: If you need to change NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL, you must rebuild the Docker image. It cannot be changed at runtime.

For more detailed Docker build instructions and security considerations, see docker/DOCKER_BUILD_GUIDE.md.

Contributing to the project

You can view open tasks in our GitHub Issues. Join our Discord to discuss tasks and check what's being worked on.

ARCHITECTURE.md explains the architecture of the project (LLM generated).