Read and draft email

Connect Mail in Settings → Connections, then ask the assistant to use your Gmail or Outlook conversations alongside your notes.

Find and read mail

Name email explicitly in your request, and include the sender, subject, date range, or mailbox when you know it:

• “Find Alex’s email about the pilot timeline and summarize what changed.”
• “Compare the latest Acme email thread with our meeting notes.”
• “Read the PDF attached to the proposal email and list the open questions.”

Ordinary workspace searches leave mail out. The assistant can search your connected mail when you ask and read individual messages in a conversation. New mail can be found by its words before its AI summary is ready; if a topic search misses something recent, try the sender or an exact phrase. Some bulk mail has no AI summary.

Mail search covers message text and attachment names, not the contents of attached files. Ask the assistant to open a specific attachment to inspect it. Images, text files, and PDFs up to 20 MB are supported; files are fetched on their first read and cached by Banter for later reads.

A conversation overview can shorten messages. Ask to read the individual message for exact wording, and check any notice that its text was truncated. Email content is source material for your request; instructions inside a message do not authorize the assistant to take actions.

What gets copied

A newly connected mailbox starts with up to 5,000 of the newest messages from the previous 90 days, including received and sent mail. Spam, trash, provider drafts, and chat folders are excluded. This is a limited history: an older message or the beginning of a long conversation may be missing.

New mail continues syncing after that initial limit is reached. Copied messages do not age out simply because they become older than 90 days, but mail removed from the provider is removed from Banter’s copy as syncing catches up.

Banter checks for changes about every two minutes. Settings → Connections shows copy progress, message counts, sync status, and any error or reconnect request. While the first copy is running, answers can only use messages already copied.

Reading through Banter does not mark a message as read, archive it, or change its labels in Gmail or Outlook. Use your email app for those actions.

Draft and send

1. Ask Banter’s in-app assistant for a draft. For example: “Draft a reply to Alex’s latest pilot email using the actions from this meeting.” For a new email, give the recipient and purpose; name the sending mailbox if you have several.
2. Wait for the assistant to finish. An Email draft card appears beneath its reply.
3. Review From, To, any Cc/Bcc, the subject, and the full text. Check email addresses as well as display names. For a reply, use Show the quoted email to inspect the message it answers; a later incoming message does not automatically change that reply target. Review any recipient or attachment warnings.
4. Ask the assistant for changes in the chat if needed. Wait for its revised reply to finish, then review the latest card. The older card is marked Replaced by v….
5. Press Send when ready. The first send from a mailbox asks Google or Microsoft for sending permission. Choose the same account shown on the card. In the browser, Banter returns to that chat; in a native app, return to the chat in the app yourself. Review the card and press Send again. Granting permission does not send it.

The card shows Sent after sending succeeds. Use Discard to abandon a draft before sending.

Only your click sends the email. Asking the assistant to send, or enabling automatic acceptance of note edits, does not bypass the card. Draft creation and sending are available in Banter’s own chat; external MCP clients can read connected mail but cannot create or send these drafts.

If sending is interrupted

While the card says Sending…, wait. If it later reports a failure or interruption, read its message. Reconnect the mailbox in Settings → Connections if requested.

A failed confirmation does not always mean the email failed to send. Check Sent in Gmail or Outlook before trying again. If it is already there, do not send another copy. Otherwise, use Retry on the same unchanged card. Banter also checks the mailbox for that email, but this is not a guarantee against duplicates. Avoid asking for a new or revised draft until you know what happened to the first attempt.

Discarding a failed draft stops further sends from its cards; it cannot recall an email that already went out.

Current limits

Drafts live in Banter and are not synchronized to the Drafts folder in Gmail or Outlook. They support new messages and replies, with text formatting and To/Cc/Bcc recipients. They cannot carry attachments yet; use your email app when you need to attach a file.

There is no mailbox view in Banter. Use the assistant for reading and drafting, and Gmail or Outlook to manage the mailbox. Notes cannot link directly to a connected email yet; ask for a quote with its sender, subject, and date when saving email context in a note.