Working with email from the terminal means you don't need to open Gmail or Outlook. nylas email metadata show does the job.
The nylas email metadata show command displays the raw headers and internal metadata for a message, including Message-ID, In-Reply-To, References, and provider-specific IDs. Useful for debugging delivery issues or threading problems.
Syntax
nylas email metadata show --id MESSAGE_ID
How It Works
The Nylas CLI abstracts away the differences between Gmail's API, Microsoft Graph, Exchange Web Services, and raw IMAP. You write one command; it works across all providers. This matters for automation — your cron job or CI pipeline doesn't need provider-specific logic.
Examples
Show metadata for an email:
nylas email metadata show --id msg_abc123
Extract the Message-ID header:
nylas email metadata show --id msg_abc123 --json | jq -r '.headers["Message-ID"]'
Key Flags
Run nylas email metadata show --help to see all available flags. Add --json for machine-readable output — useful when piping into jq or feeding data to scripts.
nylas email metadata show --help
Common Issues
Headers appear empty or incomplete
Some providers only return a subset of headers. Try --json for the full response including provider-specific fields.
Message-ID differs from provider's webmail
Nylas normalizes Message-IDs. The raw RFC822 Message-ID is in the headers object; the top-level id is the Nylas internal ID.
Full docs: nylas email metadata show reference — all flags, advanced examples, and troubleshooting.
All commands: Nylas CLI Command Reference
Get started: brew install nylas/nylas-cli/nylas — other install methods
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