Email Bridge

Connect your email to motd. Receive bookmarked content in your inbox. Anyone can email username@motd.social and it becomes a public post.

Connect Your Email

In the motd terminal:

> /connect email

  Enter your email address: you@gmail.com

  Verification email sent to you@gmail.com
  Click the link in the email to confirm.
  Tip: add noreply@motd.social to your contacts so notifications don't go to spam.

Check your inbox. Click the link. Done.

The link expires after 10 minutes. Type /connect email again for a fresh one.

Disconnect

> /disconnect email

✓ Email disconnected.

Emailing a motd User

Anyone can send an email to username@motd.social. The email body becomes a public post in the motd feed with the [email] tag.

Rules

• Only the plain text body is used (HTML is stripped)
• First 189 characters show in the feed; full post via /goto
• Email signatures are stripped (--, Sent from my iPhone, etc.)
• Reply chains (quoted text with >) are removed
• Subject line is ignored
• Attachments are ignored
• Maximum 500 characters stored per post

How it looks

From a connected motd user:

@bob · 5m
@mika hey saw your project, really clean work
                                          [email]

From an unknown sender:

email:john@gmail.com · 5m
@mika hey saw your project, really clean work
                                          [email]

Rate limits

Unknown email senders: 5 emails per hour per address.

Receiving Notifications

When your email is connected, you receive emails for:

• New posts from users you bookmarked
• New posts matching tags you bookmarked
• Replies to your posts
• Posts that @mention you

Not emailed:

• The entire feed
• Posts from killed/filtered users
• Posts from users with high filter scores

Email format

From: motd.social <noreply@motd.social>
Subject: @alice on motd.social

@alice · just now
just shipped the wasm compiler [rust] [wasm]

—
motd.social
Reply to this email to post on motd.

Plain text only. Terminal aesthetic even in the inbox.

Replying to notifications

Reply to a notification email and your reply becomes a threaded reply on motd. The original notification is quoted and stripped — only your new text is posted.

Notification Settings

In /settings, connected users see:

Email notifications: on
  Notify on: bookmarked users/tags, mentions/replies

Toggle each notification type on or off. Email and Telegram notifications are independent.

Long Posts (Read More)

Posts longer than 189 characters show an excerpt in the feed:

@bob · 5m
@mika hey saw your project, really clean work. I was
wondering if you considered a different approach to the
parsing step because...
                                    [read more · 847 chars]
                                                    [email]

Click [read more] or type /goto [post_id] to see the full text. This applies to all posts, not just email.

Server Setup

Outbound (sending notifications)

Outbound email uses the Brevo transactional API. No local mail server needed.

• API endpoint: POST https://api.brevo.com/v3/smtp/email
• Authenticated via BREVO_API_KEY in .env
• Sender: motd.social <noreply@motd.social>
• Free tier: 300 emails/day

DNS records (on INWX for motd.social):

• SPF: v=spf1 include:sendinblue.com ~all
• DKIM: CNAME brevo1._domainkey (via Brevo dashboard)
• DMARC: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:rua@dmarc.brevo.com

Inbound (receiving email as posts)

Inbound email is handled by Maddy (mail server already running on the VPS for anomata.eu). Maddy receives email for motd.social, then forwards it via SMTP to the motd Node.js app.

Flow: sender → MX → Maddy (port 25) → localhost:2525 → motd SMTP listener → post created

DNS: MX record motd.social → anomata.eu (priority 10)

Maddy config (/etc/maddy/maddy.conf):

• motd.social added to $(local_domains)
• TLS certs loaded for both anomata.eu and motd.social
• target.smtp motd_forward forwards to tcp://127.0.0.1:2525
• destination motd.social in local_routing delivers to &motd_forward
• destination motd.social in smtp block accepts all *@motd.social addresses

The Node app runs an SMTP listener on 127.0.0.1:2525 (started in server/index.js). It parses the raw email with mailparser, extracts sender/recipient/body, and creates a post.

Maddy management

systemctl status maddy          # check status
systemctl restart maddy         # restart after config changes
journalctl -u maddy -f          # live logs
maddy creds list                # list mail accounts

Config: /etc/maddy/maddy.conf

Backup: /etc/maddy/maddy.conf.bak

← Open motd.social terminal