Manage email drafts with the Nylas API and CLI

Sometimes an email shouldn't go out the instant your code runs. A human needs to review it first, or the user wants to compose now and hit send later, or an AI agent proposes a reply that a person approves before it ships. The mechanism for all three is the same: a draft. Build that against providers directly and you're juggling Gmail's draft resource, Microsoft Graph's, and an IMAP APPEND to the Drafts folder, each with its own shape and quirks. The Nylas Email API collapses that into one draft resource. You create a draft on the user's account, it lands in their real Drafts folder, and you send it later with a single request, the same way across Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo, iCloud, IMAP, and Exchange. This post walks the full draft lifecycle from two angles: the HTTP API for your backend, and the nylas CLI for the terminal. I work on the CLI, so the terminal commands below are the ones I reach for. One draft resource across every provider A draft in the Nylas model is a real object in the user's mailbox, not a staging area on the side. When you create one, it saves to the user's own Drafts folder on their provider, so it shows up in their normal mail client exactly like a draft they started themselves. That's the property that makes drafts useful for review workflows: a person can open the mailbox and see the pending message before it sends. Because drafts are real provider objects, edits flow both ways. A draft you create through the API appears in the user's mail client within the provider's sync window, and a change the user makes there alters the same draft you'd fetch back through the API. The operations split across two paths: create and list live on /v3/grants/{grant_id}/drafts , while fetch, update, send, and delete act on a specific draft at /v3/grants/{grant_id}/drafts/{draft_id} . They behave the same across all six providers, so you write the integration once. Create a draft Creating a draft is a POST /v3/grants/{grant_id}/drafts with the same message