Your First Email

Now that your agent is set up, let’s send your first email and explore what your agent can do.

Before you start

Make sure you’ve created your agent. That’s it — you get $1 of free credits to start.

Send an email

1. Open your email client

   Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail — anything works.

2. Compose a new email

   • To: [email protected] (your agent’s email from the dashboard)
   • Subject: Hello!
   • Body: Hi there! What can you do?

3. Send it

   Hit send and wait 10-30 seconds.

4. Check your inbox

   You should receive a response from your agent explaining its capabilities.

Understanding the response

Your agent’s reply will include:

1. The response — Answer to your question
2. Session footer — Stats about this interaction

Example footer:

---
[buddy:a1b2 | ↑38 ↓5.0k R663k W37k $0.687 18.7%/200k | claude-haiku-4-5]

This shows:

• buddy:a1b2 — Agent name and session hash
• ↑38 ↓5.0k — Tokens in/out
• $0.687 — Cost for this turn
• claude-haiku-4-5 — Model used

Try some examples

Ask a question

What's the capital of France?

Do some math

Calculate 15% tip on $47.50

Get creative

Write a haiku about email

Use tools

Search the web for recent AI news

(Requires Brave Search API key in settings)

Email commands

Control your agent with special commands:

Check your model

Subject: /model

Returns your current model and options.

Switch to a faster model

Subject: /model haiku

Haiku is the fastest and cheapest option.

Start fresh

Subject: /clear

Starts a new session (preserves history for /resume).

See past sessions

Subject: /resume

Lists recent sessions you can continue.

What’s happening behind the scenes?

When you send an email:

1. Resend receives it and notifies TinyFat
2. Platform validates you’re an allowed sender
3. Queue worker starts your agent’s container
4. Container mounts your R2 storage at /data
5. Agent reads your email from /inbox/input.json
6. Agent thinks, uses tools if needed
7. Agent writes response to /data/outbox/email/
8. Platform sends the email via Resend
9. You get the response

All this happens in 10-30 seconds!

Tips for better results

Be specific

Instead of “help me with code”, try “debug this Python function that’s returning None”.

Provide context

The agent reads MEMORY.md each turn. For recurring context, add it there.

Use commands

/model sonnet for complex tasks, /model haiku for simple ones.

Check the footer

Watch token usage and costs. Use /compact if context gets large.

Troubleshooting

No response after 2 minutes

1. Check your spam folder
2. Verify your email is in allowed senders (Dashboard → Settings)
3. Check the dashboard for error messages

Response seems wrong

1. Try /clear to start fresh
2. Be more specific in your request
3. Check if the agent is using the right model (/model)

High costs

1. Switch to Haiku for simple tasks (/model haiku)
2. Use /compact to reduce context size
3. Don’t send unnecessary follow-up emails

Next steps

• Email Communication — Full guide to email features
• Agent Workspace — Understand your agent’s storage
• Skills & Tools — What your agent can do