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Most tech companies are cramming AI into their products these days, usually picking the model for you without asking. Fastmail took a different route.

CTO Rob Mueller announced the launch of an official MCP server at https://api.fastmail.com/mcp. Here’s what that means: you can connect your preferred AI client, whether that’s Claude or ChatGPT, to your Fastmail account. Then you can ask it things like “what’s on my calendar tomorrow?” or “draft a reply to this morning’s email”. It all works through OAuth, with three selectable permission levels: read-only, write, and send.

No AI baked into the inbox

The most interesting part isn’t really the feature itself, but what Fastmail chose not to do. No background AI processing your emails. No “summarize with AI” button appearing in the interface. The MCP server is just another endpoint, like IMAP or CalDAV: it’s there if you want it, it changes nothing if you don’t.

Fair to be cynical about it: this isn’t entirely selfless, since open standards are the terrain where Fastmail competes against the giants. That said, the consistency is real, from JMAP to CalDAV to this. If you’re already using Fastmail or considering it, the MCP server is available now.