Connect guide

Connect GitHub Copilot to your email through Mailopoly

GitHub Copilot and Mailopoly: in Copilot CLI, /mcp add with Mailopoly's URL gives Copilot your email — every account you own, searched together, already sorted — under permissions you set. Sign in when it asks, tick reading, making changes or sending, and Copilot can search, draft and send across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud and any IMAP mailbox — and, with business channels added to your plan, your Slack, Teams and WhatsApp too. This is GitHub Copilot in the CLI and in VS Code. The Copilot cloud agent doesn't support OAuth MCP servers today, so it can't use Mailopoly yet.

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This page is about GitHub Copilot — the Copilot CLI and Copilot in VS Code. It is not about Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot in Outlook, which are different products with their own Outlook connection.

Does GitHub Copilot support Gmail without Mailopoly?

No. GitHub Copilot CLI and the Copilot cloud agent have no email integration of their own; the cloud agent's defaults are the GitHub MCP server and a browser. “Copilot in Outlook” is Microsoft 365 Copilot, a separate product.

Mailopoly gives Copilot CLI every account you own in one connection and one question — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, IMAP — with mail that arrives already filtered by Cleanbox and invoices, events and deliveries extracted, and reading, making changes and sending as separate grants you can revoke.

Before you start

  • GitHub Copilot, set up and signed in. This guide covers what happens once you have it.
  • A Mailopoly account — start one here, 7-day free trial, no credit card.
  • The mailboxes you want it to see, connected to Mailopoly. Gmail and Outlook connect with a Google or Microsoft sign-in; Yahoo, iCloud, AOL and IMAP mailboxes use an app password you enter on Mailopoly's own page — never in a chat or a config file. The connect guides have the exact steps for each provider.

Connect GitHub Copilot to your email in three steps

1 Connect your mailboxes to Mailopoly

  1. Start a Mailopoly account at mailopoly.com/sign-up — 7-day free trial, no credit card.
  2. Connect each mailbox you want Copilot to reach: Gmail or Outlook with a Google or Microsoft sign-in, anything else with an app password from your provider's security settings. Each account gets one line in the same inbox — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, any IMAP mailbox.
  3. If you want Copilot to have an address of its own, pick one of the @mly.life addresses included in your plan and keep it for the agent's correspondence. It's still your address, on your account, so you see everything it sends and receives.

2 Add Mailopoly to GitHub Copilot

  1. In Copilot CLI type /mcp add. Server name mailopoly, server type HTTP, URL https://fastapi.prod.aws.mailopoly.com/mcp-server/, leave headers empty, tools *, then save (Ctrl+S). Or add to ~/.copilot/mcp-config.json: { "mcpServers": { "mailopoly": { "type": "http", "url": "https://fastapi.prod.aws.mailopoly.com/mcp-server/", "tools": ["*"] } } }.
  2. Copilot CLI authenticates OAuth servers at start-up and from the /mcp forms; sign in with your Mailopoly account in the browser when prompted. It registers itself with Mailopoly automatically.
  3. Tick what Copilot is allowed to do — reading for search and summaries; making changes for drafts, labels, tasks and reminders; sending only if you want it to send, from any connected address or your @mly.life address.
  4. In VS Code, the same server goes in .vscode/mcp.json under servers with "type": "http". Ask.

The Copilot cloud agent (repository Settings → Copilot → MCP servers) only accepts servers with a static secret in a COPILOT_MCP_* header and doesn't support OAuth, so it can't sign in to Mailopoly today. Use the CLI or VS Code.

Official docs: GitHub Docs: Add MCP servers to Copilot CLI ↗

3 Give it a job

Whatever you've connected to Mailopoly is what Copilot can reach. Some jobs people hand over on day one:

  • Find the email from the customer that describes the crash and summarise the steps to reproduce.
  • Search all my accounts for the licence key from the vendor and tell me which message has it.
  • Draft a reply to the release manager from my work address; leave it in drafts.

What GitHub Copilot can do with your email through Mailopoly

  • Search every account in one question — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud and IMAP together, or one account by name — by sender, date, topic or the half-remembered phrase somewhere in the body.
  • Work from the Cleanbox — your personal, non-promotional mail already separated from newsletters, promotions and automated noise, so a summary is a summary of what matters.
  • Read summaries, not raw messages — every email arrives already summarised, with invoices, events and deliveries extracted with their amounts, dates and status.
  • Keep My Day — see tasks and commitments pulled from every inbox, add tasks and reminders, tick things off.
  • Draft and send — save drafts to Mailopoly for you to review, or with the send permission send from whichever connected address fits the conversation, or from your @mly.life address.
  • Know what things cost — look up an invoice, total the week's bills, see what your subscriptions add up to.
  • Tidy up — label, file or clear mail in bulk, when you tell it to.
  • Business channels too — add them to your plan and your Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and TikTok messages sit in the same connection, and replies go back out through the channel they arrived on.

Should you give an agent your email account at all?

The warnings you'll find are right about one thing: an agent that logs in to Gmail as you, with your password, on a machine you don't control, is a bad idea. Mailopoly doesn't work that way. Your Google and Microsoft accounts connect to Mailopoly through their own sign-in, and other providers through an app password you enter on Mailopoly's page — Copilot never has a password in its hands and never logs in to your provider at all.

GitHub Copilot connects to Mailopoly with a scoped OAuth sign-in. Reading, making changes and sending are separate grants, sending is flagged as a confirm-first action in the protocol itself, every tool call is audit-logged against your account, and you can revoke Copilot from Settings → Security → Connected AI assistants in the Mailopoly app — access ends immediately. Mailopoly is independently security-assessed to CASA Tier 2 by TAC Security. If you want a hard line, give Copilot reading only, or give it one of your @mly.life addresses to send from so nothing leaves under your name unless you say so. More on whether it's safe to give AI access to your email and the security page.

What goes wrong with GitHub Copilot, and the fix

  • The server is listed but the tools never load. The OAuth sign-in didn't finish. Open /mcp, select mailopoly and choose authenticate; make sure a browser can open on the machine.
  • You added it to the cloud agent and it fails. The cloud agent can't use OAuth servers. Mailopoly doesn't currently offer a static token for it; use the CLI or VS Code.
  • It only reads mail when you prompt it. Copilot acts within a turn. For Copilot to be *messaged* by Mailopoly, and to message you when it's done, see the GitHub Copilot agent guide.
  • It connected but the tools don't answer. Mailopoly's tools respond on an active subscription or trial. If the trial has lapsed, the connection stays but calls return nothing useful until the plan is active.
  • It can read but won't draft or send. Those are separate permissions. Sign in again from Copilot and tick making changes or sending — or check what it holds under Settings → Security → Connected AI assistants in Mailopoly.

Related: GitHub Copilot on the Switchboard · Email for AI agents · Connect Outlook · Is it safe to give AI access to your email?

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