Protonlite (protonmail)

Pure-Python Proton Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive client with an MCP server. Works on a free plan, no Bridge; the password never reaches the model.

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protonlite

A small, dependency-light Python client and API for Proton Mail (ProtonMail) -- Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive, with no Proton Mail Bridge and no paid plan. Ships an optional MCP server so an agent (Claude Code, Cursor) can use your mailbox.

Proton has no IMAP or SMTP. The official way in is Proton Mail Bridge, which needs a paid plan. protonlite talks to Proton's web API directly, so it works on a free account, and the end-to-end crypto is ported from Proton's own MIT-licensed Go libraries (go-srp, go-proton-api). It stays MIT-licensed and dependency-light: just OpenPGP (PGPy13, a maintained fork of PGPy), bcrypt and requests. No CAPTCHA solver, no computer-vision stack -- a person completes Proton's verification page the same way Proton's own apps do.

Unofficial. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Proton AG. "Proton", "Proton Mail", "Proton Calendar" and "Proton Drive" are trademarks of Proton AG. It talks to a private, undocumented API that can change at any time, and using it may be subject to Proton's terms of service. Use it at your own risk, on accounts you own.

What it does

  • Mail -- read the inbox and any folder, decrypt messages (HTML flattened to text), search, send (plain or HTML, attachments, replies in-thread, scheduled), save drafts, mark read/unread, trash/delete, labels and folders, empty trash, storage usage.
  • Calendar -- read the agenda, create / edit / cancel events, send invitations, RSVP.
  • Contacts -- read, create, edit and delete contacts (signed/encrypted vCards).
  • Drive -- list, download, upload (encrypted), move, rename, trash, and create public share links.

All of it is end-to-end: keys are unlocked locally with the account password and messages, events, contacts and files are decrypted on your machine.

Install

pip install protonlite

Requires Python 3.10+.

Quickstart

import os
import datetime as dt

from protonlite import ProtonMail

# --- Signing in -------------------------------------------------------------
# The recommended way is the CLI `protonlite login`, which reads the password
# with getpass so it never lives in a script. For automation, read it from the
# environment rather than hard-coding it. Proton usually asks a human to
# complete a verification page; login raises HumanVerificationRequired with
# that URL -- open it, then call again passing verification_token (see
# "Signing in" below). Sign in each account once; every login saves its own
# session file.
ProtonMail.login(
    "you@proton.me",
    password=os.environ["PROTON_PASSWORD"].encode(),
    session_path="you@proton.me.json",
)

# --- More than one account --------------------------------------------------
# Reopen each saved session independently -- no password needed. The two
# clients are fully independent mailboxes.
client  = ProtonMail.from_session(session_path="you@proton.me.json")    # personal
client1 = ProtonMail.from_session(session_path="work@proton.me.json")   # work
# (after a CLI `protonlite login`, ProtonMail.for_account("work") finds it by name)
print(client.addresses()[0]["Email"], "/", client1.addresses()[0]["Email"])

# --- Mail -------------------------------------------------------------------
for msg in client.list_messages(unread_only=True):
    print(msg.time, msg.sender.address, msg.subject)
full = client.read_message(msg.id)
print(full.text)                                  # HTML flattened to prose
client.send(to=["friend@example.com"], subject="Hi", body="Hello")
client1.send(to=["teammate@work.com"], subject="Hi from work", body="Hello")

# --- Calendar ---------------------------------------------------------------
cal_id = client.list_calendars()[0]["ID"]
begins = dt.datetime.now(dt.timezone.utc) + dt.timedelta(days=1)
event = client.create_event(cal_id, summary="Demo",
                            start=begins, end=begins + dt.timedelta(hours=1))
for ev in client.list_events(cal_id, start=int(begins.timestamp()) - 3600,
                             end=int(begins.timestamp()) + 86400):
    print(dt.datetime.fromtimestamp(ev.start, dt.timezone.utc), ev.title)
client.delete_event(cal_id, event["id"])

# --- Contacts ---------------------------------------------------------------
cid = client.create_contact(name="Ada Lovelace", emails=["ada@example.com"])
for row in client.list_contact_emails():
    print(row["name"], row["email"])
client.delete_contacts([cid])

# --- Drive ------------------------------------------------------------------
drive = client.drive()
with open("report.pdf", "rb") as fh:
    drive.upload("", "report.pdf", fh.read(), "application/pdf")
for entry in drive.list_folder(""):
    print(entry["name"], entry["type"])
link = drive.share_link("report.pdf")
print(link["url"])                                # https://drive.proton.me/urls/...#password

Command line

A small CLI covers the mail basics:

protonlite login --user you@proton.me
protonlite unread
protonlite read <message-id>
protonlite send --to friend@example.com --subject "Hi" --body "Hello"

Signing in

Proton logins from a server almost always trigger a human-verification page (hCaptcha). The login flow surfaces that URL so a person can complete it in a browser; protonlite never solves it and never asks for a password over any channel but your own code. The account password is used only to derive keys locally -- it is never stored; the saved session holds OAuth-style tokens and the derived key passphrase, nothing more. Two-factor (TOTP) is supported.

MCP server

protonlite ships an optional MCP server so any MCP client (Cursor, Claude Code, Claude Desktop) can use Proton through it. Sign in once with the CLI, then run the server pointed at that session:

pip install "protonlite[mcp]"
protonlite login --user you@proton.me          # one-time; saves a session file
PROTONLITE_SESSION=~/you@proton.me.json protonlite-mcp

protonlite mcp starts the same server, so uvx --from "protonlite[mcp]" protonlite mcp runs it without a local install (this is what the MCP registry entry uses).

Wire it into an MCP client (e.g. Claude Desktop / Cursor mcpServers config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "proton": {
      "command": "protonlite-mcp",
      "env": { "PROTONLITE_SESSION": "/home/you/you@proton.me.json" }
    }
  }
}

The server never takes a password -- it reuses the saved session. It exposes 18 tools: list_messages, read_message, search_messages, send_message, calendar, contacts, a full Proton Drive set -- drive_list, drive_download, drive_upload, drive_mkdir, drive_move, drive_rename, drive_trash, drive_share_link, drive_unshare_link -- and three send-policy tools: email_policy_status, email_allow and set_send_confirmation. It returns other people's content wrapped as untrusted data. drive_share_link makes a public link whose URL is the whole secret, so it is meant for files you intend to share. send_message can also attach local files, for example one you just fetched with drive_download.

Send policy (allowlist and confirmation)

send_message is governed by a recipient allowlist and an optional "confirm before sending" rule, both of which the agent can read and change:

  • email_policy_status shows the current allowlist and whether confirmation is on.
  • email_allow sets the allowlist -- specific addresses or globs (*@company.com) to restrict sending, ["*"] to allow anyone, [] to block all sends.
  • set_send_confirmation turns the confirm rule on or off. When on, send_message sends nothing on the first call and returns a confirmation request; it sends only when called again with confirm=true.

These three tools are what the agent can change, so on their own they are convenient but advisory. The hard controls are set out of band, by a person, and the agent cannot loosen them -- with env vars, or with the protonlite policy CLI:

  • Recipient ceiling. PROTON_ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS (comma-separated addresses/globs), or protonlite policy ceiling <addrs>, is a ceiling the email_allow tool cannot exceed: a send to anyone outside it is refused no matter what the agent does.
  • Hard confirmation. PROTON_REQUIRE_SEND_CONFIRMATION=1, or protonlite policy require-confirm on, turns send_message off for the agent entirely -- it is always refused, and the confirm argument cannot lift it, so a person sends from a terminal with protonlite send. (The agent's own set_send_confirmation only controls the softer two-step rule, where confirm=true is enough; a determined or manipulated agent can pass that itself, so it is a checkpoint, not a barrier.)

Manage the hard policy from a terminal:

protonlite policy show                         # print the effective policy
protonlite policy ceiling *@your-company.com   # a ceiling the agent cannot exceed
protonlite policy require-confirm on            # agent can no longer send; you send via the CLI
protonlite policy require-confirm off           # lift it

Also run the server only in an MCP client that asks you to approve each tool call, because send_message and drive_upload read local files and can send them out. For a send gate the agent can never reach -- a fail-closed human-approval hook on every send -- use hermes-proton below.

Status and limits

The write paths (Drive upload, calendar event creation, share links) were reverse-engineered from Proton's Go and web clients and verified against live accounts, but the API is undocumented and may change. Calendar key generation shells out to gpg (Proton requires an Ed25519 key that PGPy cannot generate). Bug reports and PRs welcome.

Related

protonlite is also the engine behind hermes-proton, a Proton plugin for the Hermes Agent that adds a recipient allowlist and a human-approval gate on every send.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.