Get the full content of an email message by its message ID (from mail.search or mail.unread_summary). Returns subject, sender, date, body, to, cc, and attachments (name, MIME type, index for use with mail.save_attachment).
AI agents call mail.read_message to retrieve information from Orchard without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool retrieves and queries email data without modifying, deleting, or executing any operations. It is a straightforward read operation that returns message metadata and content. The low severity reflects that reading mail, while potentially sensitive from a privacy perspective, does not cause system-wide harm or enable arbitrary code execution when misused by an AI agent.
From the tool's definition Tool name is 'mail.read_message' and description states it 'Get[s] the full content of an email message' and 'Returns subject, sender, date, body, to, cc, and attachments'. These are purely retrieval operations with no modification, deletion, or side effects.
Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access mail.read_message gives an agent:
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and Orchard, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for mail.read_message:
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"mail.read_message": {}
}
}mail.read_message is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
Free to start. No card required.
Get the full content of an email message by its message ID (from mail.search or mail.unread_summary). Returns subject, sender, date, body, to, cc, and attachments (name, MIME type, index for use with mail.save_attachment). It is categorised as a Read tool in the Orchard MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the Orchard MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for mail.read_message: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches Orchard. Nothing to install.
mail.read_message is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the mail.read_message rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for mail.read_message. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
mail.read_message is provided by the Orchard MCP server (l22-io/orchard-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Start from Orchard, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.
Free to start. No card required.
65 Orchard tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.