# atbridge — full capability guide

> Your private AI suite for emails, calendars, contacts, notes & tasks — works with
> any AI, from Thunderbird, MCP or the CLI, running on your machine.

This is the long-form companion to [llms.txt](https://atbridge.ai/llms.txt). It
walks the real, shipping capabilities the way people actually use them — each as a
short **Situation → Task → Action → Result** story, followed by what you can do.
Everything here is a demonstrated capability, not a roadmap.

atbridge turns Thunderbird into a private control layer over **emails, calendars,
contacts, notes, and tasks**, driven by **the AI of your choice**. No vendor
lock-in; nothing is routed through atbridge's servers; the app runs locally on your
machine, so a cloud model only ever receives what you choose to send it. See
[Bring your own AI](#bring-your-own-ai-any-provider-any-modality) below for the full
provider list and the multi-model, multi-modal approach.

---

## The one thing most people miss: you don't need the Thunderbird window

Every operation below is reachable **out of the box over MCP and a CLI — not only
the Thunderbird GUI**. Same actions, three ways in:

- **Inside Thunderbird** — the @bridge panel: an AI Chat, one-click Fast Actions,
  a Branded Email composer, and a full markdown Notes workspace.
- **Over MCP** — from Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, or any agent
  that speaks MCP. atbridge shows up as tools your assistant can call.
- **From the CLI** — shell, scripts, cron, or CI. JSON in, JSON out.

**Situation:** you live in your terminal or your IDE and rarely open a mail client.
**Task:** still run your inbox, calendars, and contacts from where you already are.
**Action:** point Claude Desktop or Cursor at atbridge's MCP server (one setup
command), or call the `atbridge` CLI directly in a script.
**Result:** your agent triages mail, books meetings, and updates contacts on your
behalf — no Thunderbird window ever opened. This is a cornerstone for developers and
for anyone who wants the functionality without a GUI, and it is never hidden.

Over MCP or the CLI you are **not limited to any provider list or model** — the
agent (or script) uses whatever model it already runs, cloud or local. The only
requirement is access to MCP or the CLI. The curated provider picker below is for
the **in-Thunderbird** @bridge surfaces; the connectors themselves are
model-agnostic and unlimited.

---

## Bring your own AI (any provider, any modality)

**Situation:** you already pay for one or two model providers, or you want sensitive
content to never touch a cloud at all.
**Task:** use exactly those models — and use the right kind of model for each job.
**Action:** in Thunderbird, activate any provider in the @bridge panel and pick a
model; your API key is encrypted on-device, sealed by your OS keychain. For fully
private work, point at a local model.
**Result:** one suite, many models — each request handled by the model you chose,
cloud or local.

Providers you can activate inside Thunderbird:
- **OpenAI**
- **Anthropic Claude**
- **Google Gemini**
- **Mistral AI**
- **DeepSeek**
- **Moonshot Kimi**
- **xAI Grok**
- **Groq (Llama)**
- **OpenRouter**
- **NVIDIA NIM**
- **Ollama (local — private)** — models run entirely on your machine
- **OpenAI-compatible (custom URL)** — any endpoint that speaks the OpenAI API,
  including your own self-hosted server

**Multi-model, multi-modal.** atbridge isn't one-model-fits-all. You can use
**different models for different kinds of content**:
- **Text** — reasoning, drafting, summarising, planning.
- **Images (vision)** — read a screenshot, a scanned document, or a chart, and
  transcribe or describe what's in it.
- **Audio (transcription)** — turn a voice memo into text.

Each modality can be served by a **cloud** model or a **fully local, private** one,
so you can (for example) keep transcription and image reading entirely on-device
while using a cloud model for long-form drafting — or run everything locally. Bring
your own AI, mix and match, no lock-in.

---

## Emails

**Situation:** 40 messages landed overnight across two accounts.
**Task:** find the few that actually need you, and clear the rest.
**Action:** ask @bridge "what needs a reply today?" — in Thunderbird, from Claude
Desktop, or `atbridge mail list --unread`.
**Result:** a ranked, plain-language summary; you reply to three, archive the rest,
and it's done in a minute — with far fewer tokens than a cloud bridge would burn.

What you can do with emails:
- Read, search, list, and thread — across **every** account and mailbox at once.
- Draft, reply, reply-all, and forward — in plain text, HTML, or Markdown.
- Send, save as draft, move, tag/label, mark read/unread, and delete.
- Full compose header control when you need it (Reply-To, priority, receipts, DSN,
  custom headers) under whichever identity you choose.
- Work fictional or real mailboxes the same way — Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, FastMail,
  ProtonMail Bridge, or your company IMAP.

## @bridge Branded Email

**Situation:** you need a launch announcement that looks designed, not like a
plain-text memo.
**Task:** get a polished, on-brand HTML email without touching a design tool.
**Action:** describe it — "announce the Q3 beta, upbeat, with a signups chart" —
and let @bridge render it in your saved theme.
**Result:** a fully-styled HTML email (headings, buttons, images, and real charts)
opens in the Thunderbird compose window for your review before you send. Charts are
rendered locally — no data leaves for a rendering service — and it renders
consistently across major mail apps without your AI burning tokens on layout.

What you can do:
- Turn a plain description into a branded HTML email, in your colours and fonts.
- Include real charts — bar, line, area, stacked bar/line, scatter, bubble, pie,
  doughnut, polar area, and radar — generated on your machine.
- Save and reuse themes and templates; works from the CLI and MCP too, not just TB.
- Always opens in compose for review first — no accidental sends.

## Calendars

**Situation:** someone asks for "30 minutes this week."
**Task:** offer times that don't collide with anything on any of your calendars.
**Action:** ask @bridge to find free slots, or `atbridge calendar find-slots`.
**Result:** conflict-free options across all your calendars, then a created event —
with cross-calendar clash detection so your AI never double-books you.

What you can do with calendars:
- Create, update, move, and delete events across every calendar you hold.
- Cross-calendar clash detection before anything is booked.
- Find free slots around your working hours; send and respond to invites (RSVP).
- Ask in plain language ("move my 3pm to tomorrow") or script it deterministically.

## Contacts

**Situation:** you're about to email "Maya" but her address lives in another book.
**Task:** just address the message without hunting for the record.
**Action:** "email Maya about the renewal" — @bridge resolves her across every
address book Thunderbird holds.
**Result:** the right contact, the right address, no manual lookup.

What you can do with contacts:
- Search, create, and update contacts across all address books.
- Manage distribution lists (create, add/remove members, list, delete).
- Let the AI resolve people by name so "email Maya" just works.

## @bridge Notes

**Situation:** you keep launch plans, meeting notes, and voice memos in scattered
places, and you want your AI to actually use them.
**Task:** one private, local workspace your AI can read from and write back into.
**Action:** keep folders of `.md` notes in @bridge Notes; record a voice memo,
**Transcribe** it, drop in a chart or a formula, and **Plug the note as context**
for the docked AI Chat.
**Result:** the AI answers with your note in hand — improve the plan, extract the
action items, or turn the whole note into a branded email draft in one click. Your
notes stay as plain `.md` files on your machine — a workspace you own, not a silo.

What you can do with notes:
- A real WYSIWYG markdown editor with a raw-Markdown escape hatch.
- Mermaid diagrams, LaTeX math, inline charts, images, and audio notes with
  transcription.
- Connect notes with `[[links]]`; copy a portable link to any note.
- **Fast Actions** off the open note: **Use as Context** (hand the note to the AI)
  and **To Email Draft** (render the note — chart, formula, image and all — as a
  branded email in the compose window).
- Capture chat straight into a note; everything is offline and yours, no lock-in.

## Tasks

**Situation:** an email buries three commitments in a wall of text.
**Task:** capture them as tasks without re-typing anything.
**Action:** use the **task-extraction Fast Action** on the message, or ask the AI to
"turn this into tasks," or `atbridge tasks create …` in a script.
**Result:** clean, dated tasks you can list and complete — from Thunderbird, an
agent, or the command line.

What you can do with tasks:
- Create, list, update, complete, and delete tasks.
- Extract tasks from an email in one click, or let the AI do it in chat.
- Manage them from any surface — TB, MCP, or CLI.

## @bridge AI Chat (inside Thunderbird)

**Situation:** you want an assistant that can actually *act* on your mailbox, not
just describe it.
**Task:** chat in plain language and have it do the work, safely.
**Action:** open the @bridge panel, pick your provider and model (any cloud
provider, or local Ollama), and ask.
**Result:** an agentic chat that reads and writes your emails, calendars, contacts,
notes, and tasks as tools — with write actions gated behind a confirmation so
nothing happens without your say-so. It docks beside your mail or your notes, and
picks up the message or note you're looking at as context.

## Fast Actions — one-click ETL between emails, calendars, tasks, contacts & notes

This is the feature that makes "AI-native" feel like magic: turn **any** entity into
**any** other entity in a single click. Think of it as Extract–Transform–Load for
your daily objects — @bridge extracts the meaning, transforms it into the right
shape (structuring the fields with your AI when you want that), and loads it into a
new email, task, event, contact, or note — always shown for your review before
anything is created.

**Situation:** an email lays out three follow-ups, a meeting, and a new supplier's
details.
**Task:** act on all of it without re-typing anything into five different forms.
**Action:** open the message and use its Fast Actions — "Turn this email into…".
**Result:** in one click each, you get a task list, a calendar event, a contact, or
a reply draft — pre-filled and ready to confirm.

Real one-click transformations (each shown for review first):
- **A note → an email draft.** Open a note, click **To Email Draft**, and the whole
  note — chart, formula, image and all — renders as a branded HTML email in the
  Thunderbird compose window. No copy-paste.
- **An email → a set of tasks.** Click **Extract Action Items**: @bridge pulls the
  commitments out of the message, you untick anything you don't want, and a second
  click creates the tasks — titles and due dates already filled in.
- **An AI Chat answer → a contact.** Ask the chat to find someone's details, then
  **To Contact** turns the reply into a new address-book entry in one click.
- **An email → a calendar event, a task, a reply, or a note.** "Turn this email
  into…" → **To Calendar Event**, **To Task**, **To Reply**, or **To Note/Save To
  Notes**, each pre-filled from the message.
- **A chat reply → a branded email, a draft, a note, a task, an event, or a
  contact** — the same one-click set lives off every assistant reply.
- **A note → live context** with **Use as Context**, so the AI builds every answer
  on the note you're looking at.

With the optional **"Allow AI in Fast Actions"** toggle, @bridge uses your chosen
model to *structure* the fields first — extracting the title, due date, attendees,
or contact fields for a richer prefill — counting as a single AI call. Off by
default, it just drops the text straight in. Either way, you review before it's
created. (Fast Actions are on the paid plans + trial.)

## @bridge Skills (deterministic, no AI needed)

**Situation:** you want "today's agenda" or "this week's clashes" instantly, without
spending a model call.
**Task:** get exact, repeatable answers for common questions.
**Action:** run a Skill — `today`, `week`, `clashes`, `next-free-slot`,
`birthdays`, `unread-recent`, `from …` — as a slash-command in chat or from the CLI.
**Result:** a precise result computed directly over your data, fast and free of AI
cost, with per-skill visibility and your own working hours respected.

---

## How you connect it (task → result)

- **Use it in Thunderbird:** install the add-on and the local bridge (about five
  minutes), pick your AI provider in the @bridge panel, and start asking. Your API
  key is encrypted on-device, sealed by your OS keychain — or run fully local with
  Ollama.
- **Use it from Claude Desktop / an agent:** run the one-time MCP setup so atbridge
  registers as an MCP server; your assistant can then call every operation above as
  tools. Writes stay gated.
- **Use it from your IDE (Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code):** same MCP server — have
  your coding agent compose a branded email or check your calendar without leaving
  your editor.
- **Use it from the CLI / scripts / CI:** call `atbridge …` with JSON in and JSON
  out. Wire it into cron, a deploy pipeline, or your own automation.

## Private by design

- The bridge runs on your machine, listening only on localhost — your mail is not
  routed through atbridge's servers.
- Bring your own AI: any cloud provider, or a fully local model via Ollama, so
  sensitive content can stay entirely on-device.
- You choose what each request sends; a cloud model only ever sees what you hand it.

## Faster and cheaper than a cloud MCP bridge

Because a direct action runs locally instead of making a cloud round-trip, atbridge
measures roughly **20× faster per direct operation** (single-digit milliseconds vs a
~110 ms cloud round-trip) and about **3.5× cheaper per fetch** (72% fewer input
tokens), with no unsolicited HTML padding your context. The LLM bill you already pay
drops because replies are lean and text-first.

## Plans

- **Free** — a 14-day trial with unlimited operations + MCP, no card required; after
  the trial, 20 operations/month, 1 device, 1 bound email account, the standalone
  @bridge AI Chat, @bridge Notes as a standalone workspace (basic editor), and a
  "Sent with @bridge" outbound footer.
- **Personal** — from €4.99/mo (early-bird): 300 operations/month, up to 2 devices,
  unlimited email accounts, MCP, the docked @bridge AI Chat (beside mail, notes &
  compose), Fast Actions, 10 Branded Email drafts/month, and the full @bridge Notes
  editor.
- **Pro** — from €9.99/mo (early-bird): unlimited operations, up to 5 devices, and
  everything unlimited (including Branded Email).
- **Enterprise** — for teams, centrally managed.

## Platforms & requirements

- macOS, Linux, and Windows.
- Requires Thunderbird 128 ESR or newer.
- One Go binary is the CLI, the MCP server, and the Thunderbird bridge — nothing
  else to install; no Node runtime ships.

## Languages

- **Product UI (the Thunderbird @bridge extension) ships in 23 fully-translated
  languages:** English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese,
  Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Czech, Korean, Galician, Catalan,
  Basque, Simplified Chinese, Romanian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Greek, and Hungarian.
  Every surface (AI Chat, Compose, Notes, Fast Actions, Skills, settings) is
  localised; the UI follows Thunderbird's language and can be chosen in @bridge settings.
- **Website, documentation, and account dashboard are available in 10 languages** —
  English plus Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Polish, Czech,
  and Turkish. Localised marketing at https://atbridge.ai/es/ (and /de/, /fr/, /it/,
  /pt/, /ja/, /pl/, /cs/, /tr/), docs at https://atbridge.ai/docs/es/ (…/docs/de/,
  etc.), with hreflang on every localised page; the signed-in dashboard follows the
  account language.
- **Transactional email** (magic-link, receipts, notices) is sent in English or
  Spanish, following the account's language (other languages fall back to English).
- The CLI and MCP interfaces are English-only (they're for scripts and agents,
  not end-user reading).

## Pages & docs

- Home: https://atbridge.ai/
- Pricing: https://atbridge.ai/pricing
- Download: https://atbridge.ai/download/
- Start a free trial: https://atbridge.ai/start-trial
- Enterprise: https://atbridge.ai/enterprise
- Documentation: https://atbridge.ai/docs/
- Install & first-run: https://atbridge.ai/docs/start/install/
- Connect Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code (MCP + CLI): https://atbridge.ai/docs/setup/
- @bridge AI Chat: https://atbridge.ai/docs/thunderbird/ai-chat/
- Branded Email: https://atbridge.ai/docs/branded-email/
- Notes: https://atbridge.ai/docs/notes/
- Recipes & automations: https://atbridge.ai/docs/recipes/
- CLI reference: https://atbridge.ai/docs/reference/cli/
- MCP reference: https://atbridge.ai/docs/reference/mcp/
- Why it's fast & cheap: https://atbridge.ai/docs/architecture/why-fast-and-cheap/
- Privacy: https://atbridge.ai/privacy
- Terms: https://atbridge.ai/terms