Five Nylas CLI Tools to Give AI Agents Controlled Email and Calendar Access
Use the five Nylas CLI tools—email send, email list, calendar events list, contacts search, and agent account create—to give AI agents controlled email and calendar access. Configure NYLAS_MCP_TOOLS to expose only these tools.
Configure your AI agent's MCP to expose only the five recommended tools and set up periodic email list checks.
Summary
The article explains how to give an AI agent limited email and calendar capabilities by selecting five Nylas CLI tools. It lists <code>nylas email send</code>, <code>nylas email list --json</code>, <code>nylas calendar events list</code>, <code>nylas contacts search</code>, and <code>nylas agent account create</code> as the core commands. The author details why <code>email send</code> is the most used tool and how to structure the prompt to automatically notify stakeholders. It also describes the JSON flag for <code>email list</code> and the filters that matter most, such as <code>--unread</code> and <code>--from</code>.
The article covers <code>calendar events list</code> and <code>calendar find-time</code> for scheduling, <code>contacts search</code> for lookup, and <code>agent account create</code> for provisioning new inboxes. It mentions the ability to scope tools via the <code>NYLAS_MCP_TOOLS</code> environment variable and that the agent can run <code>email list</code> every five minutes to decide human attention. The takeaway is to start with these five tools and add more as workflow demands grow.
Key changes
- email send command for sending emails
- email list with --json for reading messages
- calendar events list for listing events
- calendar find-time for scheduling free slots
- contacts search for fuzzy lookup of names and emails
- agent account create for provisioning new inboxes
- NYLAS_MCP_TOOLS env var to scope exposed tools
- recommended pattern: run email list every 5 minutes to trigger human attention