An offline processing skill designed to inspect, search, and extract emails and attachments directly from local Mozilla Thunderbird storage profiles.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install thunderbird
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install thunderbird using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader?
The Thunderbird skill provides local, read-only access to offline email archives generated by Mozilla Thunderbird. By bypassing the user interface and interacting directly with underlying profile data files on disk, this skill allows an AI agent to efficiently extract information without UI automation overhead. It serves as a reliable local source of truth for analyzing historical email communication, cached IMAP messages, and local archives.
This utility automatically discovers active profile repositories on both Windows and Linux environments. It processes raw mailbox structures directly, extracting key metadata, body previews, or complete message texts based on your granular search criteria.
Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader Use Cases
- Investigating offline mailbox content to answer specific inbox questions such as checking for unread daily mail.
- Conducting local forensic or historical deep-dives by filtering messages by sender, recipient, subject, or content bodies.
- Bulk extracting, filtering, and saving email attachments to a specified local directory without opening the email client.
- Gathering local email metadata summaries in JSON format for external analytical workflows or multi-agent ingestion.
How Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader Works
- Profile Discovery: The script scans well-known system application data directories on Windows and Linux to detect existing Thunderbird user profiles.
- Account Selection: It parses the chosen profile to list available mailbox accounts, isolating the scope to a single account or email address fragment to maximize performance.
- Storage Parsing: It directly inspects local
Mail/andImapMail/folders, reading mbox files or Maildir structures while utilizing.msffiles solely as indexes. - Filtering and Extraction: The engine evaluates targeted search queries, date ranges, unread statuses, or attachment constraints against the raw message text.
- Result Aggregation: Focused summaries containing the source mailbox path, date, sender details, and body previews are returned or exported to JSON.
Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader Setup
Prerequisites
Ensure Python is installed on your system and available in your environment path.
Running Commands
Execute the companion script from the root of the skill directory. If executing from an external working directory, resolve the absolute path relative to the skill root.
# List all local Thunderbird profiles detected on the system
python scripts/search_thunderbird.py --list-profiles
# List mail accounts linked inside a specific profile
python scripts/search_thunderbird.py --profile default-release --list-accounts
Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill interacts natively with Thunderbird's on-disk ecosystem. It maps out paths and filters components according to the following matrix:
| Storage Component | Target Target Path / Type | Purpose in Skill |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Profile Root | %APPDATA%/Thunderbird/Profiles |
Auto-discovery target |
| Linux Profile Root | ~/.thunderbird or ~/.mozilla/thunderbird |
Auto-discovery target |
| Local Data Folders | Mail/ and ImapMail/ |
Core message payload sources |
| mbox Formats | Raw monolithic files (e.g., Inbox) |
Primary message source |
| Maildir Formats | Directories containing cur/ and new/ |
Alternative message structure parsing |
| Index Files | .msf extensions |
Used strictly for metadata/unread flags |
Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Storage Reader Advanced Features
- Temporal Shortcuts: Quick time-range bounding using flags like
--today,--yesterday,--since, and--untilsupporting ISO-8601 timestamps. - Structured Data Output: The
--jsonflag transforms standard command-line summaries into programmatically parseable JSON payloads. - Attachment Pipeline Management: Capabilities to list, filter via
--attachment-name, or programmatically download files using--save-attachments. - Targeted Content Extraction: Isolated execution scopes using
--subject-onlyor--body-onlyto narrow matching behavior while avoiding noisy matches via--exclude.
SKILL.md
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