Qasim Muhammad

Posted on Apr 6

The Nylas Plugin for OpenClaw: Send Email, Manage Calendar, Search Contacts

#agents #api #openclaw #tutorial

Your OpenClaw agent can browse the web and write code. But it can't check your inbox, create a calendar event, or look up a contact.

One plugin fixes that.

What you'll build

By the end of this post, your OpenClaw agent will be able to:

Send and search emails (Gmail, Outlook, IMAP — any provider)
Create, update, and delete calendar events
Search contacts across connected accounts
Switch between multiple email accounts by name

No SMTP config. No OAuth dance. No provider-specific code.

Get started

Sign up at dashboard-v3.nylas.com and create an API key
Connect at least one email account under Grants → Add Account
Install the plugin:

openclaw plugins install @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin
openclaw config set plugins.entries.nylas.config.apiKey nyl_v0_your_key_here
openclaw gateway restart

Verify: openclaw nylas status

New to the Nylas CLI? The getting started guide walks through installation and first-time setup. Full plugin setup with troubleshooting: cli.nylas.com/guides/install-openclaw-nylas-plugin

Try it out

Once installed, you talk to your agent naturally.

Send an email

"Send an email to alice@example.com with the subject 'Meeting tomorrow' and ask if 2pm works."

Behind the scenes, the plugin calls nylas_send_email — your agent never touches SMTP. For a deeper look at sending email from the command line, see the send email guide.

Search your inbox

"Find all unread emails from the engineering team in the last 3 days."

The plugin uses nylas_list_emails with folder, sender, date, and unread filters.

Create a calendar event

"Create a 30-minute meeting called 'Design Review' tomorrow at 2pm with alice@example.com."

The plugin calls nylas_create_event with attendees, time, and duration. It handles timezone conversion using your configured timezone (defaults to UTC). See the calendar management guide for more on managing events.

Check availability

"Am I free Thursday between 10am and 4pm?"

nylas_check_availability queries your calendar and returns open slots.

Record a meeting

The plugin handles calendar events, but you can also record meetings directly from the terminal — capture Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams calls without leaving the command line.

Search contacts

"Find the email address for someone named Chen at Acme Corp."

nylas_list_contacts searches across all connected accounts.

Prefer the terminal over agents?

If you want email, calendar, and contacts directly from the command line (no agent required), check out the Nylas CLI. Same Nylas API, terminal-native interface. The guides cover everything from sending your first email to managing Google Calendar from the shell.

Multiple accounts

If your API key has multiple grants (work Gmail + personal Outlook), the plugin handles it:

openclaw config set plugins.entries.nylas.config.grants '{"work":"grant-id-1","personal":"grant-id-2"}'
openclaw gateway restart

Then tell your agent which account to use:

"Send this from my work account."
"Check my personal calendar for Friday."

The plugin resolves the grant by name.

What's under the hood

The plugin exposes 16 tools to your agent:

Category	Tools
Email	list, get, send, draft, threads, folders
Calendar	list calendars, list/get/create/update/delete events, check availability
Contacts	list, get
Discovery	auto-discover grants

All tools use the Nylas API v3 through the official Node SDK. The plugin auto-discovers your grant ID, client ID, and organization from just the API key — so there's nothing else to configure.

Standalone usage in your own projects

Don't use OpenClaw? The package works as a regular npm module too:

import { createNylasClient } from "@nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin";

const client = await createNylasClient({
  apiKey: "nyl_v0_your_key_here",
});

// Send an email
await client.sendMessage({
  email: "recipient@example.com",
  subject: "Hello from code",
  body: "<p>Sent with @nylas/openclaw-nylas-plugin</p>",
});

// List recent emails
const emails = await client.listMessages({ limit: 10 });

// List calendar events
const events = await client.listEvents({ calendarId: "primary" });

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