Help & how-to

Akiko is a multi-account email client built on the Gmail API. To begin, you connect one or more Gmail / Google Workspace accounts and Akiko mirrors their mailboxes into a unified canvas.

Connect your first account. From the home page, click Sign in with Google. Google will ask you to approve the scopes Akiko needs (reading, sending, modifying labels). On approval, you're dropped into the inbox canvas with your mailbox already syncing in the background.

Add more accounts. Open Settings (gear icon, top-right) and use + Connect another accountat the bottom of the Accounts list. Google's chooser lets you pick an existing account or add a new one inline — no incognito window needed.

Initial sync pulls the most recent ~500 messages per account. A background cron plus Gmail's Pub/Sub webhook keeps everything current after that.

Panes. Each connected account gets its own pane on the canvas. The header dropdown picks the layout (Grid, Primary + Monitors, Columns, Fixed, Panels). The focused pane shows a ring so keyboard shortcuts know which account to target.

Folders.Each pane has its own folder strip. The primary tabs are Inbox, Sent, Starred, Snoozed. The More dropdown holds Drafts, Important, All Mail, Trash, and Spam. Click Inbox to see Gmail's inbox-tagged messages; click All Mailto see everything on the account except Trash and Spam (the equivalent of Gmail's All Mail).

Categories. When Inbox is active, a second row of category tabs appears: Primary, Social, Promos, Updates, Forums — same sub-tabs Gmail uses.

Search. The Ask Akiko bar (bottom of the canvas, Ctrl + K) is both natural-language and keyword. Gmail-style operators work: from:, to:, subject:, has:attachment, is:unread, is:starred, is:snoozed. Semantic search kicks in when the query reads like a question.

Returning to the list. Opening a message in one account and then clicking another account's pane clears the first pane's open thread — so when you come back, you see the list again, not the last email you had open.

Attachments. Paper-clip icons on rows indicate attachments. Open the message and attachment chips appear below the body; click to download. If a chip is missing for a message where Gmail shows one, Akiko will lazily refetch and persist it the next time you open the thread.

Compose. Press c or click Compose. The drawer opens with a From selector (all your connected accounts are available), To/Cc/Bcc, subject, and body. Attach files via the paper-clip; supports multiple files.

Signatures.Per-account signatures can be set in Settings → Accounts → Signature. Akiko auto-appends your signature to the body unless you've deliberately disabled it for an account.

Reply & Reply All. Press r to reply or a to reply-all. Reply All builds recipients Gmail-style: the sender plus everyone originally in the To field, minus your own address, de-duplicated; the original Cc is preserved.

Scheduled send. In the compose drawer, next to Send, use the clock button to pick a delivery time. Akiko stores the draft and a cron fires the send at the chosen time.

Auto-saved drafts. Drafts save to localStorage while you type, keyed by account + reply target. If you accidentally close the drawer, re-opening reply/compose on the same message restores the draft.

Triage. Akiko classifies incoming messages as needs-reply, waiting, or fyi using Haiku 4.5. The triage tabs sit in the folder strip with live counts; click one to filter the pane.

Summaries. Opening a long thread triggers a summary (Sonnet 4.6) cached on the message row. Short messages skip this — the snippet is enough.

AI drafts. Click Akiko: draft a reply on any thread. Akiko reads the conversation and writes a reply in your voice. The first time you use it, a voice-profile extraction runs on your sent mail (cached in localStorage, re-used after that).

Ask Akiko.The bar at the bottom of the canvas is a chat interface. Ask questions across all your accounts ("what did the Globex invoice say?") or request actions ("archive all newsletters from this week"). Bulk actions get a dry-run preview before executing.

Autonomy dial. Top-right of the canvas. Three levels — Safe, Balanced, Full Throttle — that determine how far Akiko will act on its own vs. asking for confirmation. Default is Safe.

Morning briefing. A short AI-generated daily digest shows up at the top of the canvas when you first open Akiko in the morning.

Press ? anywhere in Akiko to see the full cheatsheet. Highlights:

• j / k — next / previous message
• Enter — open focused message
• Esc — close thread / close drawer
• r — reply
• a — reply all
• f — forward
• c — compose new message
• e — archive
• s — toggle star
• z — snooze (preset durations)
• # or d — delete (trash)
• Ctrl+K — focus Ask Akiko bar
• ? — shortcut cheatsheet

Reconnecting. If Gmail access stops working for an account (Google revoked the token, scopes changed, or the OAuth app was in Testing mode and the 7-day refresh window expired), click Reconnect next to that account in Settings. The compose drawer also surfaces a reconnect link inline if sending fails for the same reason.

Account order. Drag accounts up or down in Settings → Accounts. Order controls the position of panes in every layout.

Decks.Group accounts into decks (Default, Active Clients, Watching, Internal) via Settings → Decks. Switch the active deck at the top of the canvas to show only that deck's accounts.

Gmail permissions. Akiko requests read, modify, and send scopes. Read is needed to sync; modify lets us archive / label / mark-read on your behalf; send powers compose. You can review granted access anytime at myaccount.google.com/permissions.