@bridge Compose — AI in the compose window

@bridge Compose is the AI panel that docks right in Thunderbird’s compose window. Click the @b button in the compose toolbar and the @bridge pane opens beside your draft — with your draft already handed to it as context. Ask the AI of your choice to improve, rewrite, shorten, change the tone, or translate what you’ve written, then Insert or Replace the result back into the message. Everything runs on your machine.

Compose vs. Branded Email

Branded Email is a part of @bridge Compose, not a separate thing. Compose is the whole AI-writing surface in the compose window; Branded Email is one thing it can produce — a polished, on-brand HTML email. Everything else on this page (improve, rewrite, tone, translate) is plain-text writing help.

What you can do

Improve a rough draft

Write the gist, then ask @bridge to make it clear and polished — in one click, without leaving the compose window. Switch the AI provider mid-draft (a cloud model for one pass, a local one for the next).

Rewrite & retone

Shorter. Friendlier. More formal. Ask for the version you need and Replace the draft, or Insert an alternative below it.

Translate

Turn the open draft into another language in place — same layout, your words, translated.

Turn it into a branded email

Hand your content to @bridge Branded Email to render a fully-styled, on-brand HTML email — charts, tables, your theme — from the same window.

Draft-as-context, Insert & Replace

When you open @bridge in the compose window, your current draft becomes the context for the conversation — you don’t paste anything. Ask “tighten this and make the ask clearer” and the reply is about your email. Then:

• Insert drops the AI’s text into the draft at your cursor.
• Replace swaps the whole draft for the AI’s version.

The compose pane runs ephemeral, no-tools sessions (it’s about the text in front of you, not your mailbox), with the AI of your choice — any provider, or a private local model via Ollama.

Branded Email — one of its outputs

The headline capability of Compose is Branded Email: describe what you need (“invoice Acme for 10 hours at $120”) and @bridge renders a polished, on-brand HTML email — your AI writes the content, @bridge builds the email-safe HTML.

@bridge Branded Email → AI-designed, on-brand HTML emails — invoices, newsletters, proposals and more. The full guide + every template.

Where else it runs

Compose lives in the Thunderbird compose window, but the same rendering is available everywhere @bridge runs — the @bridge AI Chat, over MCP, and from the CLI (atbridge compose …). See the CLI reference for the compose commands.