List all chats with contact names, sorted by recent activity
AI agents call list-chats to retrieve information from iMessage MCP Server without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool retrieves and displays chat information from the local iMessage database without altering, deleting, or executing any operations. It is purely informational. The severity is low because while it accesses personal chat metadata, listing existing conversations has minimal blast radius and no irreversible consequences.
From the tool's definition Tool name 'list-chats' and description 'List all chats with contact names, sorted by recent activity' indicate retrieval and querying of existing chat metadata without modification or deletion.
Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access list-chats gives an agent:
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and iMessage MCP Server, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for list-chats:
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"list-chats": {}
}
}list-chats is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
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List all chats with contact names, sorted by recent activity. It is categorised as a Read tool in the iMessage MCP Server MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the iMessage MCP Server MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for list-chats: 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 iMessage MCP Server. Nothing to install.
list-chats 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 list-chats 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 list-chats. 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.
list-chats is provided by the iMessage MCP Server MCP server (sameelarif/imessage-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Start from iMessage MCP Server, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.
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14 iMessage MCP Server tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.