OpenClaw Integration

Connect OpenClaw — the open-source personal AI assistant — to your Proton Mail inbox using this project’s Discord notification bridge.

Overview

OpenClaw supports Discord as a channel. This project’s sidecar watches all folders in your Proton Mail account and posts email notifications to a Discord channel. Wire them together and OpenClaw sees your Proton Mail in real time — including messages delivered directly to Spam, Archive, or custom folders by server-side filters.

Architecture

Proton Mail servers
        │
        ▼
┌────────────────┐
│  proton-bridge  │  ◄── IMAP on 127.0.0.1:1143
│    (bridge)     │
└───────┬────────┘
        │ gRPC socket
        ▼
┌────────────────┐
│ bridge-sidecar  │  ◄── IMAP watcher polls All Mail for new messages
│    (sidecar)    │
└───────┬────────┘
        │ Discord bot API
        ▼
┌────────────────┐
│    Discord      │  ◄── channel receives email notifications
│    channel      │
└───────┬────────┘
        │
        ▼
┌────────────────┐
│    OpenClaw     │  ◄── agent reads notifications from Discord channel
│    agent        │
└────────────────┘

Setup steps

1. Deploy proton-bridge-agent

Follow the quickstart for your environment:

Docker Compose — laptop, desktop, or VPS
Kubernetes / Helm — cluster deployment

2. Create a Discord bot and channel

Go to the Discord Developer Portal
Create a new application, navigate to Bot, and copy the token
Under OAuth2 → URL Generator, select the bot scope and Send Messages permission
Visit the generated URL and invite the bot to your server
Create a dedicated channel for email notifications (e.g. #proton-inbox)
Copy the channel ID (enable Developer Mode in Discord settings, right-click the channel)

3. Configure the sidecar’s Discord notifier

Docker Compose:

cp docs/examples/docker-compose/discord.yaml.example discord.yaml
# Edit discord.yaml — set bot_token and channel_id
echo 'DISCORD_CONFIG=./discord.yaml' >> .env
make compose-down && make compose-up

Kubernetes:

helm upgrade proton-bridge chart/ -n proton-bridge --reuse-values \
  --set sidecar.discord.botToken="<your-bot-token>" \
  --set "sidecar.discord.channelID=<your-channel-id>"

4. Add the Discord channel to OpenClaw

Configure OpenClaw to monitor the Discord channel where notifications are posted. Refer to the OpenClaw documentation for channel onboarding steps — typically:

openclaw onboard --channel discord --channel-id <your-channel-id>

What OpenClaw sees

Each notification contains email metadata only — no message body. A Folder field shows where the message landed (INBOX, Spam, Archive, custom labels, etc.):

From: sender@example.com
Subject: Meeting tomorrow at 3pm
Date: 2026-02-26T21:35:25Z
Folder: INBOX
Message-ID: <abc123@mail.example.com>

When multiple emails arrive within the batch window, they are combined into a single Discord message:

From: sender1@example.com
Subject: First subject
Date: 2026-02-26T21:35:25Z
Folder: INBOX
Message-ID: <abc@mail.example.com>
From: sender2@example.com
Subject: Second subject
Date: 2026-02-26T21:35:26Z
Folder: Spam
Message-ID: <def@mail.example.com>

Messages in Sent and Drafts folders are automatically excluded from notifications.

Extracting context

OpenClaw can use the sender, subject, and folder for:

Routing — direct emails from specific senders or folders to different workflows
Summarization — generate daily digest summaries from notification history
Alerting — trigger high-priority actions for emails matching patterns (e.g. subject contains “urgent”)
Filtering — use the Folder field to distinguish inbox messages from spam or archived mail

Full message bodies (future)

The current integration forwards metadata only. For full message content, OpenClaw can connect directly to the bridge’s IMAP service (port 1143) using the bridge-generated credentials. This requires OpenClaw to support IMAP as a channel — check the OpenClaw roadmap for availability.