Writing emails

Body formats#

Choose one format per email. All HTML formats include a plain-text alternative derived from the body, so the message reads well in every client.

• --md supports tables, GitHub-style alerts, and local images; see Markdown, alerts, and images.
• --html takes a trusted HTML fragment. Existing inline styles survive; the template’s CSS is inlined around them.
• --html-raw is for complete documents you built yourself: no template, no CSS inlining, no changes.

The message body#

Supply the body through one of these sources:

• Piped standard input (stdin)
• A regular file with --file <path>
• An explicit string with --message <text> (aliases --m and -m)

df -h | mailfire --to ops@example.com --subject "Disk usage on $(hostname)"
mailfire --md --to ops@example.com --subject "Weekly report" --file report.md
mailfire --to ops@example.com --subject "Deploy finished" --message "Version 2.4.1 is live."

--file and --message are mutually exclusive, even with empty values, and either one ignores stdin. Mailfire never reads interactively from terminal stdin. Windows (CRLF) line endings are normalized, except for --html-raw, which is sent byte-identical.

Attachments#

mailfire --to user@example.com --subject "Your file" --message "See attached" --attach report.pdf

Repeat --attach to include more files. An empty body is allowed only when an attachment is supplied; for an attachment-only email from a terminal, omit --message. Piped input is still read when supplied. Attachments must be regular files; a leading ~ is expanded. The content type is detected from the file’s content.

Recipients and sender#

Use repeatable --to, --cc, and --bcc flags:

mailfire --to alice@example.com --to "Bob Example <bob@example.com>" \
  --cc team@example.com --bcc audit@example.com --subject "Status" --message "All green."

Addresses can be plain (user@example.com) or include a display name ("Name <user@example.com>"). Quote display names when passing them to the shell. Comma-separated recipient lists are not supported, because commas are valid in display names. Bcc recipients receive the message but never appear in its headers.

The sender comes from from in the [sending] section of the configuration, or from --from, which overrides it. If neither is set, --from is required.

Sender and recipient addresses must have dotted DNS domains with valid, nonempty labels and no leading or trailing hyphens. Quoted names and local parts, plus addressing, and Unicode addresses are supported. These are syntax checks: Mailfire does not perform DNS lookups or guarantee delivery. Invalid addresses are rejected locally and are never deferred.

Subject#

--subject is required to send. It may contain any Unicode text, but no line breaks: a line break in a header is never legitimate and could be used to inject headers, so Mailfire refuses it.