CLI reference

The atbridge binary is the whole product: the CLI, the MCP server, and the Thunderbird native-messaging host in one. This reference is split by area — pick a group below.

New to the atbridge CLI? The /cli overview — driving your whole suite from scripts, cron, CI and agents.

atbridge mail search "invoice" --from billing@example.com --snippet

Commands by area

mail Search, list, show, send, reply, forward, move, mark, delete, attachments, folders.

calendar Events, RSVP, free/busy, clash-check, settings, recurrence.

contacts Contacts + mailing lists across every address book.

notes @bridge Notes — your local, private markdown store.

tasks To-dos (VTODO) on your task-capable calendars.

AI — Connect, Compose, MCP, Skills Providers for @bridge AI Chat, Branded Email, the MCP server, and deterministic Skills.

system — license, bridge, updates Licensing, the Thunderbird bridge host, and self-update / uninstall.

Conventions

Every list/search command (mail search/mail list, contacts search/list, calendar events search, tasks list/search, notes list/search) paginates with --offset (skip the first N; pair with --limit — --offset 20 --limit 20 = results 21–40) and can return just the total with --count ({ total, approx } for the same filters). Counts are exact except for mail, which is best-effort (approx) unless scoped with --folder/--since/--until.

They also print lean JSON rows by default — just the essentials to pick a result — and take --verbose for the full per-item detail (mail search/mail list also add --snippet for a ~200-char plaintext gist); fetch anything more with the matching … get/show.

`--help` is the source of truth

Every command accepts --help, which prints its full, always-current flag list — e.g. atbridge mail search --help. This reference is the map; --help is the territory. Most commands print JSON by default and accept --pretty for a human-readable table.

For AI agents

The whole CLI is also published as flat plain text at /llms-cli.txt — one fetch, no HTML to parse, generated from the live command tree. See Reference for AI agents.