See the email side of your assistant

The Email Assistant gives you a dedicated address — something like your-name@agent.hellodeck.ai. Inbox and Contacts are the two dashboard views that let you see what flows through it: everything that arrives, and everyone it arrives from.

• Inbox — read every email you've forwarded to your assistant or CC'd it on, grouped into threads, exactly as the sender wrote it.
• Contacts — see the outside people who have emailed your assistant, and decide who's allowed through.

You'll find both in the left-hand navigation of the Deck app, right alongside your projects.

How they fit with your email assistant

Nothing new to set up — these views simply reflect the address you already have. When an email reaches your assistant:

1. Deck stores it as a message in your Inbox.
2. It groups the message into a thread with the rest of that conversation.
3. It records the sender as a contact so you can see — and govern — who's reaching your assistant.

The assistant's actual work — drafting replies, summarizing threads, filing into projects, sending your scheduled briefings — still happens over email. Inbox and Contacts are where you watch and steer that flow, not where you compose or send.

Inbox at a glance

A reverse-chronological list of every message your assistant received, with a detail view for reading full emails and whole threads.

• Unread messages stand out with a blue dot and bold text.
• Open a message to read it formatted as the sender intended, and to expand the rest of the conversation.
• Using your Inbox →

Contacts at a glance

A list of the external senders who've emailed your assistant, grouped by status, so you can approve the ones you want and ignore the ones you don't.

• Contacts appear automatically the first time someone emails your assistant.
• Approve, ignore, or restore a sender in one click.
• Managing Contacts →

What these views are not

Inbox and Contacts are read-and-manage views, not a full email client. There's no composing, replying, archiving, or deleting in the Inbox, and contacts can be ignored but not deleted. Your assistant only ever replies to you, and only over email — see What this is and isn't.

Before you start

You need an email assistant set up and enabled. If it's turned off, incoming mail isn't processed and the Inbox shows a warning until you re-enable it.

Open your Inbox

Common questions

Does this mean Deck is reading my mailbox now?

No. Inbox only shows what you forwarded to your assistant or CC'd it on — the same mail it always received. It still has no access to your personal inbox, sent folder, or email account.

Can I reply to an email from the Inbox?

Not from these views. Inbox is for reading and triaging. To have your assistant help with a reply, CC it on the thread in your own email client — see CC the assistant.

Where do contacts come from?

They're created automatically the first time an outside address emails your assistant. There's no manual "add contact" — the list mirrors who has actually reached out.