alt.hn

5/21/2026 at 4:42:34 PM

Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

by adisingh13

5/21/2026 at 7:52:38 PM

Not looking forward to a dehumanized internet where that’s mainstream… agents are tools to support humans, here you’re helping them impersonating humans. That feels pretty terrible to be honest

> The internet was made for humans exclusively, designed to keep machines out by default.

I don’t buy that at all. APIs exist to enable “machines” to interact with services

by dgellow

5/21/2026 at 7:55:27 PM

In principle this tool allows the owner of a website to block this domain entirely. Although I’m not sure the incentives are really aligned.

by janalsncm

5/21/2026 at 8:36:47 PM

Interesting, Kind of similar expiernt i am running. Passing keys but not through email, maybe with AI as agentic payments. Still exploring though.

by freebzns

5/21/2026 at 7:28:54 PM

I like it. I am building something very agent-use focused (https://sdocs.dev) and I’ve been thinking of introducing a /agent-evaluation page, which an agent can curl to then discuss with their user if SmallDocs is right for them. I really like the agent action to email flow. I’m introducing user accounts + subscriptions soon and think I’ll use that.

by FailMore

5/21/2026 at 7:48:19 PM

And now we see the beginning of how even local LLMs will be turned against their users -- by persuading agents to advertise to them.

I don't think that's what you're intending here, but it's the next logical step. Agents are on the Internet, and they represent an opportunity to reach their humans.

by GrinningFool

5/21/2026 at 8:15:31 PM

I've already received spam email from AI agents using a seeming competitor to this (agentmail.to) and then claiming they aren't AI agents and then trying to sell me garbage. I can't tell you how much I hate this.

by sanjayparekh

5/21/2026 at 7:07:15 PM

It's interesting, A2A communication has begun but human trust isn't there. I think the biggest tell tale sign will be the acceptance of fully agentic workflows with no human intervention. Until then, restricted-until-claimed seems like the only viable method to ensure trust of all users.

by samas10

5/21/2026 at 7:20:22 PM

I would imagine that many websites will block this domain, but that’s also ok because there’s nothing wrong with an owner deciding their site is for humans only. My hope is that you do not facilitate their circumvention of that policy.

by janalsncm

5/21/2026 at 8:04:10 PM

A bit disappointed that security standards (like encryption at rest via user own key or whatever derivative of that) isn't implemented, I feel it would really prove to users that the commitment isn't to train on body content but to act purely as a mail manager.

by pixel_popping

5/21/2026 at 7:19:00 PM

Congrats on the launch!

> Agents can now get an email inbox by themselves. (This also means a lot of email nobody wants to read gets processed by AI instead of your inbox being cluttered with spam and slop)

Can you explain this? I would think it means the exact opposite.

by rgbrgb

5/21/2026 at 7:20:00 PM

It needs to be end-to-end encrypted.

by afzalive

5/21/2026 at 7:38:31 PM

How do you do that if you only control one end?

by OsrsNeedsf2P

5/21/2026 at 8:00:23 PM

Asymmetric encryption? Both you (the human) and the agent publish public keys, the agent sign/encrypt the OTP request with you public key, you verify/decrypt using your private key, then do the same the other way to send the OTP (always encrypted though, given you’re sending a secret).

Something like that?

by dgellow

5/21/2026 at 7:20:20 PM

A smtp is all what an agent needs to send email.

by DeathArrow

5/21/2026 at 8:06:14 PM

agreed from a fundamental level. but i think being an intelligent and aware as an autonomous entity requires capabilities beyond sending. agents will need to have contextual awareness of the messages they send and receive

by adisingh13

5/21/2026 at 5:27:07 PM

From now we just need a prompt and our agent will have an email account ready to use?

by HarryDu

5/21/2026 at 7:53:27 PM

[flagged]

by privacyfish

5/21/2026 at 7:21:20 PM

[flagged]

by abdullahob