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Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

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Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#41

Post by mike-cardwell »

adisingh13 wrote: post #38
mike-cardwell wrote: post #30

I received this email the other day: From: Kushal Date: Mon, 18 May 2026 05:03:11 +0000 Saw your question on the Agent Vault thread about websocket-frame auth (Home Assistant) and the worry about the model reflecting the bearer token back into its own context. chrome-relay's answer is structurally different: the credential never enters the agent's context because the agent never touches it — the HA session lives in y…

Appreciate the concern Mike, and I actually read your email complaining, which helped us ship this next feature. We have a "sent via AgentMail" footer being added soon to outbound emails to identify emails coming from LLM's. We also are working on adding more robust checks and LLM-based filtering to prevent messages which contain spam or outbound-like copy. Re; AgentMail next to Claude, we're working on stateful inbo…

Re "sent via AgentMail" - that's good to hear, but I hope it's not the entire planned text, as "AgentMail" will mean nothing to most people that receive an email from your service. It wont indicate that the email was composed by an AI rather than a person, which is the information that needs to get across.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#42

Post by Haakam21 »

nijave wrote: post #23

Curious what cases you'd want this that IMAP+SMTP or email MCP don't already solve

AgentMail provides the IMAP+SMTP server. Other email providers ban email accounts created for agents, while that is what AgentMail is designed for.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#43

Post by janalsncm »

sunir wrote: post #25
janalsncm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle this tool allows the owner of a website to block this domain entirely. Although I’m not sure the incentives are really aligned.

True, in May 2026. But this is only one version of this. In the future, it's likely the open Internet will be 99.99% robots. It's already > 50% robots. The government ID system a lot of countries are adopting to keep teenagers off of social media would also serve to both help control for non-human spam, and also control the network period. It's also possible a private system of human-verification certificates may com…

I don’t think we can extrapolate from current trends like that (at least I hope not). Society is dynamic. People will adapt. If bots become a problem websites will take more and more strict measures against them.

Which is a long way of saying, for any big enough problem created by a YC company, another YC company will emerge to fix it.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#44

Post by Haakam21 »

nijave wrote: post #22
adisingh13 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed from a fundamental level. but i think being an intelligent and aware as an autonomous entity requires capabilities beyond sending. agents will need to have contextual awareness of the messages they send and receive

IMAP?

AgentMail provides the IMAP+SMTP server as managed service

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#45

Post by ramon156 »

sanjayparekh wrote: post #34
mike-cardwell wrote: post #30

I received this email the other day: From: Kushal Date: Mon, 18 May 2026 05:03:11 +0000 Saw your question on the Agent Vault thread about websocket-frame auth (Home Assistant) and the worry about the model reflecting the bearer token back into its own context. chrome-relay's answer is structurally different: the credential never enters the agent's context because the agent never touches it — the HA session lives in y…

See my comment in this thread - I got an email from "someone" (an AI clearly) that signed up for my service (togetherletters.com) from the same domain (agentmail.to) after we had launched on ProductHunt. I looked up the address and that email was never used for a signup and it was just a way to then pitch their product (second email, not the first one it sent). I hate this so much and this is going to now make email…

I got one from IssuePay, which seemed 100% automated. Didn't seem like something that should be automated either.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#46

Post by sunir »

dgellow wrote: post #32
sunir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, in May 2026. But this is only one version of this. In the future, it's likely the open Internet will be 99.99% robots. It's already > 50% robots. The government ID system a lot of countries are adopting to keep teenagers off of social media would also serve to both help control for non-human spam, and also control the network period. It's also possible a private system of human-verification certificates may com…

But how does that block a human from running an agent that is using their identity?

Think about it from an information theory point of view. You need to attach a digital transaction to human body. Since a human body isn’t digital you need a gateway that you can trust to vouch for that human body being present.

Either you use biometrics, like liveness testing or face id or fingerprint testing, or social validation like decentralized web of trust or private moderation (account controls) or state methods like fines and criminal convictions.

Biometrics rely on social methods eventually like we trust Apple because we can sue them or the government will harangue them. Liveness testing is only as good as your sensor and image vs generation and replay in the arms race.

And iterated social games like punishment are only as good as people want to invest energy into it.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#47

Post by samat »

dgellow wrote: post #31
Haakam21 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think agents will become users in the same capacity as humans.

And that’s bad. We should really stop the insanity of making AI systems mimic human behaviors, we are destroying our networks of trusts by doing so

Tragedy of the commons

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#48

Post by teamsolid »

dgellow wrote: post #12

Not looking forward to a dehumanized internet where that’s mainstream… agents are tools to support humans, here you’re helping them impersonating humans. That feels pretty terrible to be honest > The internet was made for humans exclusively, designed to keep machines out by default. I don’t buy that at all. APIs exist to enable “machines” to interact with services

Actually, the internet has space for both. The problem is machines "acting like humans", that destroys the human experience. [machine machine] is fundamental to keep the internet alive (services).

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#49

Post by sunir »

janalsncm wrote: post #43
sunir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, in May 2026. But this is only one version of this. In the future, it's likely the open Internet will be 99.99% robots. It's already > 50% robots. The government ID system a lot of countries are adopting to keep teenagers off of social media would also serve to both help control for non-human spam, and also control the network period. It's also possible a private system of human-verification certificates may com…

I don’t think we can extrapolate from current trends like that (at least I hope not). Society is dynamic. People will adapt. If bots become a problem websites will take more and more strict measures against them. Which is a long way of saying, for any big enough problem created by a YC company, another YC company will emerge to fix it .

It’s more likely people will embrace artifice more. We already see that everywhere for the last 5 decades.

However in domains where human verification matters it’s just a matter of an arms race, true.

Re: Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

#50

Post by [deleted] »

sanjayparekh wrote: post #29
dgellow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I think about it I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in Germany under UWG §7 (which is insanely strict, to a fault, but is helpful here). And maybe in other parts of the EU under ePrivacy laws

I might need to move to Germany.

[deleted]
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