---
title: "Contacts"
description: "The address book this mailbox writes to."
url: "https://openemail.uk/docs/mcp/tools/contacts"
area: "MCP server"
category: "Tools"
---

# Contacts

The address book this mailbox writes to.

## Contacts tools

| Tool | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| listContacts | The people this mailbox writes to, newest correspondence first. Search by name or address, narrow to one audience, or separate the ones somebody added from the ones that were recorded. |
| getContact | One contact by email address, with its notes in full and every audience it sits in. |
| createContact | Add a contact by hand. One contact per address, so an address already here is refused rather than written twice. The new contact joins the default audience. |
| updateContact | Change a contact's name or the notes kept against it. Passing null clears a field, leaving it out leaves it alone. |
| deleteContact | Delete a contact permanently. The notes go with it, and so does every audience it was in. |

> Contacts belong to the MAILBOX rather than to whoever saved them, so a colleague holding the same role reads and writes the same book. A contact is recorded automatically the first time a message goes out to an address from the app composer; mail arriving from an address writes nothing.

> The address is the identity and there is no id. `updateContact` therefore cannot change it, and moving somebody to a new address is a `createContact` and a `deleteContact`. `createContact` takes no `source`: anything made here is `manual`, and a send never downgrades that back to `auto`.

> None of this sends anything or subscribes anybody to anything, and `deleteContact` unsubscribes nobody, because this mailbox holds no subscription state at all. An address the mailbox keeps writing to is recorded again on the next send, with no notes and no audiences.