hermes-skills/skills/email/email-workflows/references/direct-smtp-pattern.md

Direct SMTP send (without Himalaya)

Use this when composing and sending a single email without installing the Himalaya CLI.

Prerequisites

• A password file at /root/.config/himalaya/<account>.pass with the plaintext password
• SMTP server host and port (typically 587 for STARTTLS, 465 for SSL)

Pattern

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

pw = open("/root/.config/himalaya/<account>.pass").read().strip()

msg = MIMEText("Body text here.")
msg["From"] = "sender@domain.com"
msg["To"] = "recipient@example.com"
msg["Subject"] = "Subject line"

with smtplib.SMTP("mail.domain.com", 587) as s:
    s.starttls()
    s.login("sender@domain.com", pw)
    s.send_message(msg)

Notes

• Adjust host, port, account, and password file path per deployment.
• Port 587 with starttls() is the most common; use SMTP_SSL(host, 465) for direct SSL.
• The password file is typically mode 0600 — the one created by himalaya account configure.
• For multipart or HTML messages, use email.mime.multipart.MIMEMultipart and email.mime.text.MIMEText with _subtype='html'.
• For attachments, use MIMEBase or email.mime.application.MIMEApplication.

Email-to-SMS gateway sending

Carrier SMS gateways convert an email to a text message. Keep the body short (SMS length, ~160 characters recommended for full delivery).

T-Mobile: NUMBER@tmomail.net Verizon: NUMBER@vtext.com AT&T: NUMBER@txt.att.net Sprint: NUMBER@messaging.sprintpcs.com

Sending is identical to regular SMTP — set To to the SMS gateway address. Plain MIMEText with a short body works best.

Daily recurring SMS via email

For a scheduled daily humorous/obnoxious message sent to a phone number:

1. Create a cron job prompt that generates unique subject and body each day. Include the recipient's name for personalization.
2. The prompt must forbid spam trigger words (free, limited time, act now, etc.) to avoid SMS gateway filtering.
3. Use deliver='origin' so confirmation arrives in your chat.
4. Test with a one-off SMTP send before scheduling so the user can verify delivery.

The cron job handles content generation — no static script needed for the creative part.