msgvault — archive and search your messages

Open source. Runs on your hardware.
Save email, chats, meetings, calendars, and contacts on your own computer or server. Search across accounts, look up a person's history, and work from a browser, terminal, or AI assistant.
Installers fetch the latest release and verify its SHA-256 checksum. Also on conda-forge, or build from source.
See what changed in 0.24.0 and read the upgrade notes.
Bring history from several providers into one searchable archive. Sync connected accounts or import local exports. Keep original message data and downloaded attachments alongside the records you browse.
Connect the addresses, handles, and phone numbers that belong to one person. Keep information found in the archive separate from the profile details you choose to save.
msgvault groups identities using explicit links in the archive. Matching display names alone do not merge two people.
Save a profile to keep names, notes, and contact details when linked identities change. Review profile history, merge duplicates, and reverse supported merges.
Maintain organizations, employment, relationships, and custom fields. Inspect the evidence behind a fact and pin a correction so automated updates keep your choice.
See when you exchanged messages or shared events and meetings. Activity calendars and relationship scores help you find frequent contacts and people you have not heard from recently.
Use the sidebar to open Messages, People, Files, and Sources. Press / to search from any page. Save the current view from Messages or Files, or share its URL with someone who has access to your archive. Use Back and Forward to return to earlier views.
People and background jobs
Maintain profiles, review possible duplicates, publish contacts through CardDAV, and catch up with a saved conversation brief in People → Details. Open the status dot for running and failed jobs, or Past runs for history. Update provider credentials in Settings, which shows changes that take effect after a restart. Explore the workspaces.
Keyword search reads your archive offline. Optional search by meaning sends message and query text to the embedding service you configure, which can run locally. Document, image, and profile processing have separate settings and consent steps.
Search with familiar filters such as sender, subject, and date. Use semantic search to find related meanings, or hybrid search to combine words and meaning. Ranking details explain each result.
An embedding service turns text into numbers used to compare meaning. Choose a supported local or hosted service and select which accounts to index.
Find text inside supported attachments or search images by their content. The embedded Docbank engine manages this processing. Review provider access and approve uploads before sending attachment content.
An MCP server exposes search, people, files, and analytics tools to Claude Desktop and other agents; bundled agent skills install into Claude Code and Codex. Allowing an agent to edit profiles requires explicit flags.
One background service, the daemon, coordinates archive access and scheduled work. Use the browser, terminal, scripts, or an assistant to work with the same archive.
06 / Deletion and backups
Back up your archive and check the messages you intend to remove before deleting from a provider. Review the selection, then run a separate command to move mail to Trash or permanently delete it.
For Gmail, verification compares message counts and checks a sample of stored messages. It does not prove every message or attachment was captured. Review the items you plan to delete and keep a backup.
Create a deletion manifest: a saved list of messages to review. You can create it from the CLI, Web UI, TUI, or MCP. Staging does not remove provider messages; execution is a separate CLI command.
Execution is a separate CLI step with explicit client consent. Gmail and IMAP default to moving messages to Trash; Microsoft Graph mail uses Deleted Items. Permanent deletion requires explicit opt-in. Archived messages and attachments remain available; msgvault records that they were deleted from their source.
Back up SQLite archives with snapshots of the database and attachments. New snapshots leave earlier ones intact, and you can verify them before restoring. Restoring does not require the original providers. PostgreSQL databases need separate backups.
07 / Your mail tools
Use msgvault alongside your mail client and provider exports. Keep searching your saved history after messages leave the provider.
Use a mail client to read, compose, and send mail. msgvault can prepare managed IMAP drafts and Gmail reply drafts for review there; it does not send mail.
An export gives you a snapshot in a provider's format. Import supported exports into msgvault to browse and search them alongside other sources.
Keep captured history available after it leaves the provider. Sync supported accounts, connect identities, search across sources, and use your own tools.
Read the guide for an overview, or go straight to setup. The docs cover commands, configuration, and how msgvault stores your data.
Copyright 2026 Kenn Software LLC. Open source under MIT. Alpha software — back up your data.
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