Neomd

Last updatedUpdated: May 11, 2026 by Simon Späti · CreatedCreated: Mar 25, 2026

Neomd this is my way of implementing a email TUI based on my experience on Neomutt focus on Neovim (input) and reading/writing (Markdwon) and navigating, Vim Motions.

Keyboard-first TUI email: write in Neovim, render as Markdown, screen senders first, organize emails once.

eomd is a terminal email client that lets you compose and read emails in Markdown using your $EDITOR (neovim), rendering them as minimal but beautiful HTML on send with possibility of all Markdown features and Callouts — all from a single bubbletea TUI. It features a HEY-inspired Screener workflow where new senders are triaged into accept/reject lists before hitting your inbox, turning email into a GTD-friendly, and triage emails only once workflow.

see almost all feature: reading newsletter directly in your email client (feed) - see spy pixel, if you have replied (dot) and thread mode if replied)

Reading view on the right, different screener list below:

Find a short rundown on YouTube:

# What is Unique about Neomd?

The key here is speed in which you can navigate, read, and process your email. Everything is just a shortcut away, and instantly (ms not seconds). It’s similar to the foundations that Superhuman was built on: it runs on Gmail and makes it fast with vim commands.

With the HEY-Screener, you get only emails in your inbox that you screened in, no spam or sales pitch before you added them. Or don’t like them, just screen them out, and they get automatically moved to the “ScreenedOut” folder.

With the GTD approach, using folders such as next (inbox), waiting, someday, scheduled, or archive, you can move them with one shortcut. This allows you quickly to move emails you need to wait for, or deal with later, in the right category. Processing your email only once.

With the additional Feed and Papertrail, two additional features from HEY, you can read newsletters (just hit F) on them automatically in their separate tab, or move all your receipts into the Papertrail. Once you mark them as feed or papertrail, they will moved there automatically going forward. So you decide whether to read emails or news by jumping to different tabs.

# Core Features

Only a few of the features:

Markdown compose — write in $EDITOR (nvim default), send as multipart HTML + plain text
Attachments — via yazi or <leader>a in nvim; images inline, 1–9 to download
Preview emails including images.
Open HTML emails such as Substack or others with w3m
Multiple from addresses — SMTP-only aliases, cycle with ctrl+f
Glamour reading + Kanagawa theme — emails as styled Markdown, nvim palette
Markdown formatting with bold, links, and italic. Formatted in-line and code blocks, header h2, h3
Clever and sophisticated shortcuts to move or screen emails.

Find all at GitHub - ssp-data/neomd: A minimal email TUI where you read with Markdown and write in Neovim. · GitHub.

# How to Use

Read the details with all its shortcuts at GitHub.

flowchart TD
    Start([New Email Arrives]) --> AutoScreen{Auto-Screener
Known Sender?}

    AutoScreen -->|screened_in.txt| Inbox["📥 Inbox (Next)"]
    AutoScreen -->|screened_out.txt| ScreenedOut[🚫 ScreenedOut]
    AutoScreen -->|feed.txt| Feed[📰 Feed]
    AutoScreen -->|papertrail.txt| PaperTrail[🧾 PaperTrail]
    AutoScreen -->|Unknown| ToScreen[❓ ToScreen]

    ToScreen -->|Press I| ClassifyIn[Add to screened_in.txt]
    ToScreen -->|Press O| ClassifyOut[Add to screened_out.txt]
    ToScreen -->|Press F| ClassifyFeed[Add to feed.txt]
    ToScreen -->|Press P| ClassifyPaper[Add to papertrail.txt]

    ClassifyIn --> Inbox
    ClassifyOut --> ScreenedOut
    ClassifyFeed --> Feed
    ClassifyPaper --> PaperTrail

    Inbox --> Process{Process Email
GTD Decision}

    Process -->|< 2 min?
Do it now| Action[Reply/Handle
Immediately]
    Process -->|Waiting for others
Press Mw| Waiting[⏳ Waiting]
    Process -->|Not now, later
Press Mm| Someday[📅 Someday]
    Process -->|Time-specific
Press Mc| Scheduled[🗓️ Scheduled]
    Process -->|Delete
Press x| Trash[🗑️ Trash]
    Process -->|Reference only
Press Mp or P| PaperTrail
    Process -->|Newsletter
Press F or Mf| Feed

    Action --> Done{Done?}
    Waiting --> Review[Review Later]
    Someday --> Review
    Scheduled --> Review
    Feed --> ReadLater[Read in
Feed Tab]
    PaperTrail --> SearchLater[Search when
needed]

    Done -->|Yes| Archive[📦 Archive]
    Done -->|Not actionable| Archive
    Review --> Archive
    ReadLater --> Archive

    classDef folderStyle fill:#54546d,stroke:#7fb4ca,stroke-width:2px,color:#dcd7ba
    class ToScreen,Inbox,ScreenedOut,Feed,PaperTrail,Archive,Waiting,Someday,Scheduled,Trash folderStyle

all colored boxes represent neomd folders

Key principles:

Screener first: Unknown senders never clutter your Inbox — they wait in ToScreen for classification
One-time decision: Once you classify a sender (I/O/F/P), all future emails from them are automatically routed
GTD processing: Emails in Inbox are processed once — if < 2 min, do it or keep it in inbox as doing Next otherwise move to Waiting, Someday, or Scheduled
Minimal filing: Only Archive when done; no complex folder hierarchies — use search to find old emails
Separate contexts: Feed for newsletters (read when you want), PaperTrail for receipts (search when needed)

Neomutt — the gold standard terminal email client; neomd reuses its screener list format and borrows many keybindings
HEY — the Screener concept: unknown senders wait for a decision before reaching your inbox
hey-cli — a Go CLI for HEY; provided the bubbletea patterns used here
HEY-Screener in (Neo)Mutt: My way of using HEY screener in neomutt.
Newsboat — RSS reader whose O open-in-browser binding and vim navigation feel inspired neomd’s reader view
emailmd.dev — the idea that email should be written in Markdown
charmbracelet/pop — minimal Go email sender from Charm
charmbracelet/glamour — Markdown rendering in the terminal
Kanagawa — the color palette used for the inbox
msgvault — Go IMAP archiver; the IMAP client code in neomd is adapted from it

If you rather see the prompt, check out initial prompt and its plan.

# Roadmap

Some ideas in random order:

Sent later
extend serach of emails with DuckDB - see Full-Text Search with DuckDB - peterdohertys.website
- also check msgvault
people can add their own folder: make it dynamically? (currently hard coded) - see FAQ – neomd Documentation
potential offiline mode: this is a workflow change and atm not priority, but downloading offline to batch reply on an airplane would be great. Would need encryption too, that we download all emails encrypted. Potentially encrypting our lists too? download with POP3
image rendering with neovim Image API: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/30889 (would be only during composing, not reading)
- not inside goldmark, as this does not work. Matcha uses sixel + kitty + iTerm2 + ghostty via terminal env-var detection, renders out-of-band by writing to stdout with cursor positioning (bypasses bubbletea). Uses mattn/go-sixel + stdlib image/png. and does not use glamour: has its own HTML→element pipeline (view/html.go, 1087 LOC).

# DONE

check similarity with matcha TUIs
Get notifications for certain domains/senders on Hyperland (integrated in notifications)
approving full domains, not individual senders only
Emoji reaction should be sent from the account the email was sent too
I use Listmonk for my email, it’s open source too, so I’m thinking of integrating an email or an integration that let’s me send directly from neomd to all my subscribers.. 🤔
! deamon to run on NAS or server, to automatically run screener to have screened emails also when opening on mobile
- Background sync daemon — separate neomd-sync binary (or cron job) that runs IMAP fetch + screener headlessly, so the inbox stays clean even when neomd is closed; complement to the in-process 5-min tea.Tick sync already running while neomd is open
- ? Should we use syncthing to sync text-files between my desktop, server and android phone?
(I just use normal spellchecker, works well)
- integrate Aspell (or any other spellchecker) into neomd - here someone integrated it into neomutt: Still loving the Micro Journal Rev.2 with Neovim—Chill writing session. : r/writerDeck
- has normal spell checker from neovim. not working super nicely yet, but it works: dotfiles/nvim/.config/nvim/lua/sspaeti/set.lua at a66451e7f29afce97f44d0965d31c0fa39d29c61 · sspaeti/dotfiles · GitHub
set up IMAP with proton.me and mail bridge https://proton.me/mail/bridge
Add callout support
- https://github.com/VojtaStruhar/goldmark-obsidian-callout
- https://gitlab.com/staticnoise/goldmark-callout
💡 Feature: Emoji reaction reply · Issue #9 · ssp-data/neomd
Showing and being able to attach files
Change A for switching account not a
cmd mode like vim wtih :
fix search? (e.g. find all keys that are shortcuts like above a, or disable shortcuts when searching?)
integrate Newsboat into Feed of my email? -> not great idea
Unread counts in folder tabs — e.g. Inbox (3)
having a signature when composing an email
d / u half-page scroll in reader (vim-style)
Reply-all — group reply to all original recipients
CC field in compose
Forward email — f key, pre-fills “Fwd: " subject with quoted body
Add an Attachment, quite important: the flow should be easy from within Neovim as this is the composer
choose sender in composer: setup gmail, hey, and others in one account to send - without need to switch account
highlight threads or conversations that are forth and back in a thread
Docs instad of readme.md?
better search: overall and keeping search when to apply multi command on search result
integration with contact or email - reading from screened_in list?
create a demo account for showcasing the features (e.g. neomd.demo@gmail.com)j
- create a hostpoint demo account, as gmail is way slower… defeates neomd
- when finished or restart
  - ./scripts/reset-demo.sh welcome screen
  - add or create truncates the screener lists (doesn’t delete them) and removes the welcome marker.
always on bcc in config.toml (if each email should be sent to your other email for example)
### Not priority right now
Background sync daemon — separate neomd-sync binary (or cron job) that runs IMAP fetch + screener headlessly, so the inbox stays clean even when neomd is closed; complement to the in-process 5-min tea.Tick sync already running while neomd is open
looks pretty nice, looking forward to that keychain support merge, or if you supported command line argument to fetch password like neomutt that would also be great PASS=pass xyz Reddit suggestions

Full Change log at neomd/CHANGELOG.md at main · ssp-data/neomd · GitHub.

# Presenting and Key Features

Points to showcase, see the video here - Neomd: Vim-native Email TUI with Markdown Compose & HEY Screener | Take 2 - YouTube:

opening new account
- welcome screener
- using neovim, yazi
- kanagawa theme
email start in inbox
- amount of loaded emails
screener
- and screen-all if you want
- GTD
- tabs
move around, move emails
- speed
- lists
- sorting
! search - search overall
reading emails: markdown
- opening w3m, browser AND nvim
- images
composing
- markdown native
- images attach
- send forth and back in neomd
- signature
- Preview
- drafts
- different [senders] and [accounts]
- autocomplete emails
saving drafts - UNDO
threaded view and reply DOT
- threaded view with T
comparision neomd with IMAP web view -> Always in sync if accessed from mobile
! everything folder
zoom out and jump to next read email
keyring
theming
ai integration, as it’s just a local markdown file
(Calendar integration)