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Give your AI agent an inbox: Nylas now has an official OpenClaw plugin
• 4 min read
Most AI agents can browse the web, write code, and reason through complex problems. Fewer can check an inbox, update a calendar event, or send a follow-up. That’s where a lot of real work actually happens.
The @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin closes that gap. It’s Nylas’s official plugin for OpenClaw, and it’s available now on npm.
OpenClaw is an open-source CLI framework for building AI-powered assistants. It runs locally, connects to messaging channels and external services through a plugin system, and routes agent sessions across workspaces. Developers use it to build agents that can actually take action — not just generate text.
The plugin system is where integrations live. Each plugin registers typed tools that the agent can call directly, with structured parameters and JSON responses. The Nylas plugin is one of those integrations.
Once installed, the @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin gives your OpenClaw agent 31 native tools across four areas:
Email (17 tools) — list messages, read threads, send emails, manage the full draft lifecycle, retrieve attachments, and handle folder CRUD
Calendar (8 tools) — list events, create and update meetings, check availability, delete events, and run smart scheduling via nylas_smart_schedule
Contacts (5 tools) — full CRUD: create, read, update, and delete contacts
Account discovery (1 tool) — auto-discover all email accounts connected to your Nylas API key
Every tool uses typed schemas, so the agent understands the available parameters and returns structured data it can reason over. There’s no shell command construction, no output parsing, and no exec approval configuration required.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. Once the plugin is running, your agent can handle requests like these without any additional configuration:
The agent calls the appropriate Nylas tools, retrieves structured data, and responds. Email addresses, calendar IDs, and grant IDs are resolved automatically — the agent works with names and natural language, not raw identifiers.
OpenClaw handles the agent layer. Nylas handles the communications layer underneath it.
That distinction matters because email and calendar APIs are harder to work with than they look. Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo, iCloud, and IMAP each have their own authentication models, data formats, and edge cases. Building directly against any one of them means writing provider-specific code — and maintaining it as those APIs change.
Nylas normalizes all of that into a single API. Your agent calls one set of tools. Nylas handles the provider differences on the other side. The same plugin works across all supported providers without any changes to your configuration.
A few specifics worth knowing: Nylas connects to 250+ providers, maintains a 99.99% API success rate, and is SOC 2 Type II compliant. For agents handling communication on behalf of real users, that reliability baseline matters.
Getting the plugin running takes a few minutes. You’ll need OpenClaw installed, a Nylas account, an API key, and at least one email account connected as a grant. Sign up at dashboard-v3.nylas.com if you don’t have one yet.
For the full setup walkthrough — including multi-account configuration and troubleshooting — see the plugin install guide on cli.nylas.com.
Installation as a Plugin
openclaw plugins install @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin
# Trust the plugin and expose its tools to agent sessions
openclaw config set 'plugins.allow' '["nylas"]'
openclaw config set 'tools.alsoAllow' '["nylas"]'
# Restart the gateway to load the plugin
openclaw gateway restart
Configuration
# Set your API key (only thing required — grant ID is auto-discovered)
openclaw config set 'plugins.entries.nylas.config.apiKey' 'nyl_v0_your_key_here'
# Restart the gateway to apply config changes
openclaw gateway restart
The plugin auto-discovers grant IDs from your API key, so you don’t need to configure them manually. If you have multiple connected accounts and want to reference them by name (work, personal, etc.), you can configure named aliases in your OpenClaw config.
Yes. The plugin also works as a standard npm module in any TypeScript or JavaScript project. Import createNylasClient from @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin, pass in your API key, and you have a typed client for email, calendar, and contacts without building a custom Nylas integration from scratch.
The full API reference and usage examples are in the npm package.
Create a Nylas account to get your API key, connect your first email account, and install the plugin. The full setup guide is at cli.nylas.com/guides/install-openclaw-nylas-plugin.
The plugin supports any provider connected through Nylas, including Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, Yahoo, iCloud, and any IMAP provider. Provider-specific differences are handled by Nylas — your agent uses the same tool calls regardless of which mailbox it’s working with.
Yes. The plugin supports named grant aliases, so an agent can reference accounts by name (work, personal, client) rather than by raw grant ID. If you only have one connected account, the plugin auto-discovers it from your API key without any additional configuration.
No. The plugin auto-discovers all grants associated with your Nylas API key at startup. You only need to configure named aliases if you want your agent to reference specific accounts by name.
The plugin uses Nylas API v3 through the official Node SDK. All tool calls go through the v3 REST API, so provider-specific behaviors are consistent with what’s documented in the Nylas provider guides.
Yes. MoltBot is an OpenClaw-compatible agent runtime that runs the same plugin system. The Nylas plugin works as both a standalone Node.js client and as a gateway plugin in MoltBot environments without any changes to configuration.
The plugin install guide on cli.nylas.com covers setup, troubleshooting, and multi-account configuration. For bugs or issues, open a ticket on the Nylas GitHub.
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Senior Staff Software Engineer