Guide
Folders, filing, and the mail an AI should not touch.
Advice about folder structures is everywhere and most of it is fine. What is harder to find is what a move actually does to a message, why delete does not mean gone, and why the folder you asked for arrived with a different name.
- Reading About 5 minutes
- A move Keeps read state, flags and the date
- A delete Goes to Trash, not erased
The short version
Moving keeps the flags and the date. Deleting means Trash rather than gone. Folder names come from your host, not from us, so some of them will look odd and be right. Keep it away from anything financial, legal, or newer than a month.
Mechanics
What a move actually does
Less than people fear, which is the useful thing to know before running a filing pass over a few hundred messages. A move takes the message from one folder and puts it in another, and it carries with it:
- Its flags. Read stays read, unread stays unread, flagged stays flagged.
- Its original date. The date shown is still the date it was sent.
- Everything else. Sender, recipients, headers, attachments, the lot. It is the same message in a different folder.
That holds because a move is the IMAP MOVE command rather
than the lazy version of it, which fetches the message, appends a copy to
the new folder and deletes the original. The lazy version loses all three
and stamps every message with today's date. Verified in a mail client
after moving 500 messages in one call: the dates still read as the
original send times.
The date is the one worth dwelling on. A filing operation that stamped everything with the date it was filed would sort your entire archive into one afternoon, and you would only discover it later when looking for something by date. It does not, and that is worth checking on any tool you let near a mailbox.
What it does not do
It does not leave a copy behind, it does not create a link, and it does not tag. IMAP folders are places rather than labels, so a message is in exactly one of them. If you are used to Gmail's labels, where a message can carry several at once, that is the difference to hold in mind.
Worth knowing
Delete means Trash, not gone
delete_email moves a message to Trash. That is exactly what
clicking Delete in your own mail client does, and it is deliberate: a
tool that could permanently erase mail on request is a tool one badly
phrased instruction away from a very bad afternoon.
So a delete is recoverable, with a caveat that matters. Trash empties on your provider's schedule, typically after thirty days, and nothing on our side controls or delays that. It is a deadline rather than an undo, and if you want something back you want it back this week.
There is no permanent erase, and no bulk undo
Nothing here empties Trash, and nothing here reverses a filing pass in one instruction. Undoing a move means moving things back, which means knowing where they came from, which is why the triage method insists on getting the plan in writing before anything runs.
Provider quirks
Folders, and why yours look odd
Three things surprise people, and all three are the host's doing rather than anything to do with AI.
Names get a prefix
Some IMAP hosts put everything under the inbox, so the folder you asked to
be called Clients becomes INBOX.Clients and your
sent mail is INBOX.Sent. It looks wrong and it is correct.
create_folder applies the server's own hierarchy rules rather
than forcing a convention, which is why the name you get back may not be
the name you typed.
A folder can exist and be invisible
IMAP keeps two separate lists: the folders that exist, and the folders your client has subscribed to. Many clients show only the second. So a folder can be created successfully, hold your mail perfectly, and not appear in Outlook until you subscribe to it. Nothing is broken and nothing is lost.
The special folders have fixed roles
Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash and Junk are not ordinary folders. Providers treat them specially and the server reports which is which where it can. Filing things into them is possible and is nearly always a mistake: anything you move into Trash inherits Trash's retention.
Move one message and check it in your own mail client: flags kept, date kept, and exactly where you asked.
Practice
A folder structure worth having
Shallow and few. The elaborate tree everybody builds once and abandons fails for the same reason every time: filing has to be decidable in under a second, and twenty folders is not.
Four folders covers most working mailboxes:
- Waiting, for things somebody owes you. This is the only one you will open daily.
- Reference, for things you will look up and never act on. Most of the volume goes here.
- Receipts, because they are searched by date and amount rather than by memory.
- Archive, for everything else. Search is what finds these, not structure.
Note what is missing: a folder per client, a folder per project, a folder per year. Those feel organised and they are a filing decision you have to make on every single message. Search has been better than structure for a decade, and it is much better than structure once you can describe what you remember instead of guessing the words.
Judgement
What to keep an AI away from
Anything financial or contractual
Invoices, statements, contracts, anything from an accountant or a solicitor. Not because filing them is hard, but because a misfiled one is not noticed until the moment it is needed, and that moment is always inconvenient.
Anything from the last month
Recent mail is live mail. Filing it removes it from where you expect to find it while you still expect to find it there, which produces the distinct experience of losing your own email in your own mailbox.
Anything you have not decided about
An inbox is a decision queue. Filing something you have not decided about converts an open loop into a hidden one, and the loop is still open.
Four folders and a connected mailbox is the whole setup, and trying it costs nothing.
Limits
What filing does not do
-
No filter rules
It does not set up rules. Nothing runs while you are away, so this organises what is there rather than what arrives.
-
Folders, not tags
It cannot tag. IMAP folders are places, and a message is in one of them.
-
No permanent deletion
It cannot permanently erase mail, and it cannot empty Trash.
-
No one-step undo
It cannot undo a pass in one instruction. Reversing means moving things back, one at a time.
-
The survey costs calls
It still costs calls, even though moving is batched at up to 500 messages a call. The survey that decides what goes where is a call per batch of summaries, so a real backlog is more than the free tier covers.
Can an AI sort my email into folders?
Yes, with move_email and create_folder, one message at a time and only when you ask. It is not a rule and it is not automation: nothing runs while you are away, so a folder structure built this way is one you asked for rather than one that appeared.
If it deletes something, is it gone?
No. delete_email moves the message to Trash, exactly as clicking Delete in your mail client would. It is recoverable until Trash is emptied, which your provider does on its own schedule, so it is a deadline rather than an undo. No tool here erases mail you have received or sent. The one thing that is removed outright is a draft you have replaced, by update_draft, and that is so a reworked draft does not leave its earlier versions in your bin.
Will filing change the date or lose my flags?
No to both. A move preserves the message's flags and its original date: a read message stays read, a flagged message stays flagged, and the date shown is still the date it was sent rather than the date it was filed. That last one matters, because a filing pass that re-dated everything would destroy the sort order of your archive.
Can it create folders as well as use them?
Yes, with create_folder, and it applies your server's own hierarchy and naming rules rather than inventing a convention. That is why a folder you asked to be called Clients might arrive as INBOX.Clients on some hosts.
Why can I not see a folder it says it created?
Most likely it exists but is not subscribed. IMAP separates the folders that exist from the folders your client has opted into showing, and many clients list only the subscribed ones. Subscribing to it in your mail client makes it visible and breaks nothing.
How many calls does a filing pass cost?
Roughly one per message moved, plus one per folder created. Filing a hundred messages is on the order of a hundred calls, so the free tier of 5 a day covers trying it out rather than doing it.
Attribution
Sources
- RFC 9051: IMAP4rev2, the LIST command and mailbox subscription Why a folder can exist and still not appear in a mail client that lists only subscribed mailboxes.
- RFC 6154: IMAP LIST extension for special-use mailboxes How a server reports which folder is Sent, Drafts, Trash or Junk, which is what the folder listing reads.
- The tools behind each action here move_email, delete_email and create_folder, with what each one does.
Keep going
Read next
Move one message and check it.
Flags kept, date kept, and it turns up where you asked. That is a two-minute test and the free tier covers it.