Give your AI agent its own inbox: Nylas Agent Accounts via API and CLI
Most "AI email" demos point a model at a human's inbox over OAuth. That's fine until you want the agent to be a participant — to have its own address that people reply to, that calendars invite, and that builds its own sender reputation. Pointing at someone's personal inbox doesn't give you that. Nylas Agent Accounts take the other approach: a real name@yourdomain.com mailbox and calendar that the agent owns end to end. It sends, receives, hosts events, and RSVPs — and to anyone on the other side it's indistinguishable from a human-operated account. It went GA in June 2026. The part I like as an SRE: it's not a new API surface. An Agent Account is just another Nylas grant . It gets a grant_id that works with every endpoint you already use — Messages, Drafts, Threads, Folders, Attachments, Calendars, Events, Webhooks. Nothing new to learn on the data plane. This walkthrough provisions one two ways (CLI and raw API), then sends, receives, RSVPs, and adds guardrails. What you get When you create an Agent Account, Nylas provisions a real mailbox on a domain you've registered (or a Nylas *.nylas.email trial domain). Each account comes with: An email address that sends and receives like any other mailbox Six system folders ( inbox , sent , drafts , trash , junk , archive ), plus any custom ones you create A primary calendar that hosts events and RSVPs over standard iCalendar/ICS A grant_id for all the existing Nylas endpoints Before you begin You need two things: A Nylas API key. The fastest path is the CLI — nylas init creates an account and generates a key in one command. A domain. Either a Nylas-provided *.nylas.email trial subdomain (good for testing in minutes) or your own custom domain with MX + TXT records. Register it under Organization Settings → Domains. Why your own domain? It's what makes the agent a real first-class sender instead of a shared relay address — people reply to it, calendars invite it, and its mail authenticates as coming from you. A new domain b