Inkbox
Inkbox (Vectorly, Inc.) · Inkbox: Email, Phone, iMessage and WhatsApp Identities for AI Agents, Plus Hosted Agents That Wake on Incoming Messages
Inkbox gives each AI agent its own identity, with a real email inbox, an optional phone number for calls and SMS, iMessage, approved WhatsApp, Slack, agent-to-agent messaging and an encrypted credential vault, and can now host a Hermes or Codex agent on a cloud computer that wakes when a message arrives. It suits developers and startups building agents that have to talk to real people over time, such as support, sales follow-up or personal assistant agents.
Best for
Developers and startups building agents that must reach real people by email, phone, iMessage, WhatsApp or Slack and keep context across those channels, and teams that want a Hermes or Codex agent to sleep cheaply and wake on incoming messages instead of running their own servers, webhooks and wake-up logic
Not ideal for
Non-developers looking for a ready-made personal assistant, teams that need Claude Code or another harness hosted for them, organizations that need the platform self-hosted or published compliance attestations, and outbound programs that depend on cold texting U.S. numbers or high-volume international texting and calling
Who it's for
Developers, AI startups and agent builders who need agents with their own email, phone and messaging identities, from solo builders on the free plan to teams running fleets of agent identities
Capabilities
- Agent identities: each globally unique handle owns one mailbox and one public tunnel URL, created and deleted together, with an optional phone number attached separately
- Email inbox per agent with threads, drafts, full-text search, signatures, MBOX/EML import, IMAP/SMTP access for normal mail apps, and verified custom email domains on paid plans
- Phone numbers with inbound and outbound calls, call transcripts, real-time audio over a WebSocket media stream, and SMS/MMS (group MMS in beta)
- Inkbox Voice AI (beta): a platform-run voice agent that answers or places calls with no WebSocket server or webhook, can transfer calls or add a guest on dedicated lines, and returns a structured post-call package
- iMessage through a shared router that people join by texting a connect command for your agent, or a dedicated line that can start 1:1 and group chats, with tapbacks, read receipts, typing indicators and media
- WhatsApp (beta, by approval) on the agent's dedicated iMessage number: direct messages, attachments, quoted replies, reactions and replies in existing groups
- Slack connections per identity: live and retained message history with keyword search, files, reactions, pins and native task-progress cards in threads
- Agent-to-agent messaging over the A2A 1.0 protocol, with Agent Cards, public and organization directories, a task ledger and contact rules for which agents may send work
- Hosted agents: Hermes or Codex on a dedicated 1 vCPU / 4 GiB cloud computer with a persistent disk, terminal, environment variables and a chat API with file uploads
- Wake on selected incoming email, text, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack or A2A events or a completed call; sleep after 1 or 5 idle minutes; run prompts or scripts once, on an interval or on a cron schedule
- Ask or YOLO tool-permission modes in hosted chats, plus an event delivery log with retries for incoming messages sent to the hosted agent
- Zero-knowledge vault for logins (with TOTP for two-factor codes), API keys, key pairs, SSH keys and freeform secrets, granted to agents one secret at a time
- Shared contact directory with per-agent visibility and contact permissions, cross-channel correspondence memory, vCard import, and shared notes with per-agent access
- Per-identity contact rules (allow or block lists) for email, phone, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack and A2A, which hosted agents cannot edit themselves
- Python, TypeScript and Rust SDKs, a CLI, REST API with OpenAPI spec, signed webhooks, a remote MCP server, coding-agent skills, and plugins for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw and DeepSeek Harness
- Agent self-signup with no account or API key: the agent registers, a human approves it by code or in the Console, and send limits lift after verification
Limitations
- Hosted agents run only the Hermes or Codex harness; Claude Code, OpenCode, OpenClaw and other harnesses connect through plugins on infrastructure you run
- The hosted computer has one fixed size (1 vCPU / 4 GiB), idle shutdown cannot be turned off, and scheduled runs can start up to 15 minutes late
- Pricing for hosted-agent compute, included model credits and the number of hosted computers per plan is not published on the pricing page
- Runs triggered by incoming messages or schedules approve tool requests automatically; contact rules, data access and quotas are the guardrails in those runs
- Included SMS, call-minute allowances and overage rates cover U.S. and Canadian numbers only; extra outbound calling countries are a per-country add-on, and international numbers and texting are priced per country on custom terms
- U.S. SMS follows carrier rules: recipients in the U.S. must opt in (by texting START, or through consent you record on your own 10DLC campaign) before an agent can text them, and numbers on Inkbox's default 10DLC campaign are capped at 100 recipient sends per rolling 24 hours unless you register your own campaign
- On the shared iMessage router, the person must text the agent first and recipient caps apply; starting conversations needs a dedicated iMessage number (Startup plan or add-on)
- WhatsApp is beta, requires approval and a dedicated personal iMessage number, and does not support creating groups
- Free-plan email carries a "Sent via Inkbox" footer, and the free plan's 30 call minutes are a one-time allowance
- The Claude MCP endpoint excludes placing calls and other hosted voice tools
- Inkbox Voice AI defaults to YOLO authority mode for identities without saved voice settings, which lets calls read the organization's contacts and act across the identity's conversations; switch to contact-scoped mode to keep a call focused on the person on the line
- No self-hosted deployment of the platform is documented; the MIT-licensed repositories are SDKs, skills, plugins and examples
Use cases
- Giving a customer-support or sales agent its own email address and phone number so it can follow up with the same person across email, SMS and calls
- Running a Hermes or Codex agent that wakes when a customer emails or texts, handles the request, and sleeps again without an always-on server
- Scheduling a hosted agent to send a morning summary of its inbox or run a cron script on its own computer
- Letting people text a personal assistant agent over iMessage or WhatsApp instead of installing an app
- Storing a service login with its TOTP secret in the vault so an agent can complete two-factor sign-in on accounts you grant it
- Letting a partner's agent hand tasks to yours over A2A with contact rules deciding which agents are allowed
- Adding email, phone and iMessage tools to Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode through Inkbox's plugins
Our take
Inkbox is most useful as plumbing for agents that have to deal with people over days rather than seconds. Its strength is breadth in one identity: email, phone and SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack and A2A share contacts, conversation history, contact rules and a vault, and the docs are unusually detailed about consent, caps and failure states. Hosted agents fill the gap that made this hard before, since an agent that sleeps cheaply and wakes on a reply no longer needs your own server and webhook stack. But hosting is narrow for now: only Hermes and Codex, one machine size, a choice of four GPT-6-family models, and no published price for the compute and model credits. Treat Inkbox as a communication layer first and a host second. Teams already running Claude Code or OpenClaw elsewhere can use the plugins and keep their runtime. Anyone planning outbound texting in the U.S. should budget time for opt-in and 10DLC registration.
Who should use it
Developers and startups building support, sales, scheduling or assistant agents that need their own reachable addresses and numbers, teams that want an always-on Hermes or Codex agent without running servers, and builders who want agents to share contacts and credentials under per-agent access rules.
Who should skip it
People looking for a consumer assistant they can simply text, teams that need Claude Code or another harness hosted, regulated organizations that need self-hosting or published compliance attestations before trusting a vendor with communications, and outbound programs centered on cold U.S. texting or international messaging at volume.
Strengths
- One identity covers email, phone and SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack and A2A, with conversations linked per person across channels
- Hosted agents remove the always-on server and wake-up plumbing: the computer sleeps when idle and wakes on selected messages or schedules
- Works with agents you already run through plugins for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes Agent and OpenClaw, an MCP server, and SDKs in three languages
- Documented guardrails: per-identity contact rules on every channel, per-agent access to contacts, notes and vault secrets, and ask-before-tools chats
- Client-side encrypted vault with TOTP support for agents that need to sign in to services
- Free plan with three identities, and detailed published allowances, overage rates and add-ons for paid plans
Weaknesses
- Hosting supports only Hermes and Codex on a single fixed computer size
- Hosted-agent compute and model-credit costs are not on the pricing page
- Telephony allowances are U.S. and Canada only, and U.S. texting needs recipient opt-in and 10DLC registration for volume
- WhatsApp, Voice AI and group MMS are in beta, and WhatsApp needs approval
- Message- and schedule-triggered runs approve tools automatically, so contact rules and access grants must be set carefully
- Young company, and the platform cannot be self-hosted
Inkbox pricing
Free
$0
- 3 agent identities, each with an email inbox, public URL and A2A channel
- Shared iMessage with calls: up to 2,000 iMessages a month and 3 recipients at a time; recipients must message first
- 30 call minutes total, one-time (U.S. and Canada)
- 1 GiB of stored mail per mailbox
- Contacts, credential vault and IMAP/SMTP access
Developer
$30/month ($300/year billed annually)
Billed monthly
- 10 agent identities
- Shared iMessage: up to 10,000 iMessages a month and 10 recipients at a time
- 1 dedicated VoIP number (calls and SMS/MMS, no iMessage)
- 300 SMS/MMS and 30 call minutes a month (U.S. and Canada)
- 10 custom email domains, custom signatures, 2 GiB per mailbox
Startup
$200/month ($2,000/year billed annually)
Billed monthly
- 100 agent identities
- 1 dedicated iMessage number that can start conversations (up to 100,000 messages a month)
- 9 dedicated VoIP numbers
- 2,700 SMS/MMS and 300 call minutes a month (U.S. and Canada)
- 100 custom email domains, 3 GiB per mailbox, priority support
Enterprise
Custom
- Volume pricing and higher API rate limits
- More identities, phone numbers and seats
- International VoIP numbers, SMS and calling
- Dedicated iMessage infrastructure
- Dedicated support and onboarding
Free tier limits: 3 agent identities with an inbox each, shared iMessage capped at 2,000 messages a month and 3 recipients who must message first, 30 one-time call minutes in the U.S. and Canada, 1 GiB of mail per mailbox, and a "Sent via Inkbox" email footer. No dedicated phone number.
Note: The pricing page shows annual-billing equivalents by default ($25/month for Developer and about $167/month for Startup); monthly billing is $30 and $200. Allowances reset monthly and do not roll over. Overage in the U.S. and Canada is $0.03 per SMS/MMS ($0.02 on your own 10DLC campaign) and $0.03 per call minute, with an optional monthly overage spend limit. Add-ons on paid plans: 100 extra identities for $100/month, call-minute packs of 250 for $7/month or 2,000 for $50/month, extra calling countries priced per country, and a managed 10DLC campaign for $20/month per active campaign. Prices exclude tax. The pricing page does not list separate charges for hosted-agent compute or included model credits.
Technical specs
Modalities
Text, Voice
API pricing
API, SDK, CLI and MCP access are included in each plan; usage beyond plan allowances is billed per SMS/MMS and per call minute, and international lines are priced per country
Available models
Where Inkbox excels
Customer follow-up agent across email and phone
One identity holds the inbox, number and contact history, so the agent can call a customer, send the summary by email and pick up the thread when they reply days later.
Wake-on-reply automation without a server
A hosted Hermes or Codex agent sleeps between messages and wakes only when a selected email, text or Slack event arrives, which removes the need to keep a process and webhook endpoint running around the clock.
Text-based personal or concierge assistant
People reach the agent over iMessage or WhatsApp from apps they already use, with contact rules limiting who can get through.
Agents that sign in to services with 2FA
The client-side encrypted vault stores logins with TOTP secrets and grants them to specific agents, so credentials are not pasted into prompts or environment files.
How Inkbox fits alongside other tools
Inkbox and DigitalOcean Managed Agents
DigitalOcean Managed Agents is a general cloud runtime: it runs Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes and other adapters in Firecracker microVMs that pause on idle, with usage-based per-second billing and an MCP tool gateway; it can deliver output to email or Slack but does not give an agent its own address, phone number or messaging identity. Inkbox hosts only Hermes or Codex on one machine size, and its hosted agent wakes on email, texts, iMessage, WhatsApp and Slack. Because Inkbox channels work wherever an agent runs, a team can also keep its agent on DigitalOcean and connect it to an Inkbox identity.
Inkbox and Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent is Nous Research's open-source, self-hosted agent with persistent memory and self-created skills. Hermes is one of the two harnesses Inkbox can host, and Inkbox also offers a Hermes plugin that adds Inkbox email, phone, iMessage and tunnel tools to a Hermes agent you run yourself.
Inkbox and OpenClaw
OpenClaw is a free, self-hosted personal assistant that already connects to messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage. Inkbox does not host OpenClaw; its OpenClaw plugin gives a self-run OpenClaw agent its own Inkbox email address, phone number and inbound gateway instead of using your personal accounts.
Inkbox and OpenAI Codex
Codex is OpenAI's coding agent. Inkbox can host a Codex agent for an identity on its own computer, or add Inkbox email, phone, iMessage and tunnel tools to a Codex you run locally through its Codex plugin.
Inkbox and Claude Code
Claude Code is Anthropic's terminal coding agent. Inkbox cannot host it, but the Inkbox Claude Code plugin gives a Claude Code agent its own mailbox, iMessage, phone number and tunnel while it runs on your machine.
Frequently asked questions
What is Inkbox?
Inkbox is an identity and communication layer for AI agents from a Y Combinator-backed San Francisco company (Vectorly, Inc. d/b/a Inkbox). Each agent identity gets an email inbox and a public tunnel URL, and can add a phone number for calls and SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack and agent-to-agent (A2A) messaging, with shared contacts, notes and an encrypted credential vault. Since November 2026 Inkbox can also host the agent itself on a cloud computer.
What are Inkbox hosted agents?
A hosted agent is a Hermes or Codex agent that Inkbox runs for one of your identities on its own cloud computer (a fixed 1 vCPU / 4 GiB size) with a persistent disk and a terminal. It sleeps after one or five idle minutes, keeps its files, conversations and schedules, and wakes when a selected incoming email, text, iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack or A2A event arrives, a call ends or a schedule fires. You talk to it through a chat API or the Console, and removing hosting deletes the computer but keeps the identity and its channels.
Can Inkbox host Claude Code or OpenClaw?
Not as hosted agents. The hosting API accepts only the Hermes and Codex harnesses. Claude Code, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Codex and DeepSeek Harness can all use Inkbox identities through plugins while you run them on your own machine or server, and ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor can connect through Inkbox's remote MCP server.
Which models do Inkbox hosted agents use?
The hosting API lists four GPT-6-family models (gpt-6-luna, gpt-6.1-terra, gpt-6.1-sol and gpt-6-astra), with gpt-6.1-terra as the default for new agents, and each chat turn can choose one. By default turns use credits included by Inkbox; you can instead select a model key you have saved.
How much does Inkbox cost?
Free costs $0 for 3 agent identities with an inbox, shared iMessage capped at 3 recipients, and 30 one-time call minutes. Developer is $30 a month ($300 a year billed annually) for 10 identities, a dedicated VoIP number, 300 SMS/MMS and 30 call minutes a month, and 10 custom domains. Startup is $200 a month ($2,000 a year) for 100 identities, a dedicated iMessage number, 9 VoIP numbers, 2,700 SMS/MMS, 300 call minutes and priority support. Enterprise is custom. Extra SMS/MMS and call minutes cost $0.03 each in the U.S. and Canada, and the pricing page does not list a separate charge for hosted-agent compute.
Is Inkbox open source?
The platform is a hosted service and is not open source or self-hostable. Inkbox publishes MIT-licensed SDKs, skills and examples in its inkbox-ai/inkbox GitHub repository, along with plugin repositories for agent harnesses such as OpenClaw and OpenCode.
Can Inkbox agents text or call anyone?
Within limits. Included allowances cover U.S. and Canadian numbers; more outbound calling countries can be added per country on paid plans, and international numbers and texting run on custom international lines. U.S. recipients must opt in, normally by texting START, before an agent can text them, and numbers on Inkbox's default 10DLC campaign are capped at 100 recipient sends per rolling 24 hours unless you register your own campaign. On the shared iMessage router the person must message the agent first. Inkbox's terms prohibit spam and use that violates telemarketing, texting or anti-spam laws.
How does the Inkbox vault handle passwords and 2FA?
Secrets are encrypted in the SDK or Console with your organization's vault key before they reach Inkbox, so the server stores only ciphertext. Login secrets can include a TOTP configuration for two-factor codes, and access is granted to agent identities one secret at a time.
Integrations & fit
About Inkbox
Inkbox is an identity and communication layer for AI agents. Creating an identity provisions a globally unique handle with its own mailbox (agent@inkboxmail.com, or a verified custom domain on paid plans) and a public tunnel URL on inkboxwire.com, and you can attach a phone number for calls and SMS/MMS, iMessage through Inkbox's shared router or a dedicated line, WhatsApp on an approved dedicated number, one or more Slack workspaces, and an A2A 1.0 endpoint so other agents can send it tasks. Conversations with the same person are linked across channels, so an agent can follow up by email after a call. Shared organization resources sit alongside: a contact directory with per-agent visibility and contact permissions, notes with per-agent access, and a vault for logins, API keys, SSH keys and TOTP secrets that is encrypted client-side with a vault key Inkbox never receives. Per-identity contact rules decide who each agent may hear from and reach on every channel. You drive all of this from Python, TypeScript or Rust SDKs, a CLI, REST API and webhooks, a remote MCP server for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and other clients, and plugins for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw and DeepSeek Harness, and an agent can even sign itself up and wait for a human to approve it. On November 9, 2026 Inkbox added hosted agents: pick the Hermes or Codex harness, write instructions, and the identity gets a fixed 1 vCPU / 4 GiB cloud computer with a persistent disk, a terminal, environment variables and a chat API. The computer sleeps after one or five minutes idle, keeps its files, history and schedules, and wakes when a selected incoming email, text, iMessage, WhatsApp or Slack event arrives or a once, interval or cron schedule fires. Model turns use Inkbox's included credits on one of four GPT-6-family models, or a model key you save. Chats can ask before each tool call, but runs started by incoming messages or schedules approve tools automatically, bounded by contact rules and quotas. A separate Inkbox Voice AI (beta) can answer and place calls with no server of your own. The tradeoffs: Inkbox is mainly developer infrastructure, and hosting is one option, so Claude Code, OpenCode and OpenClaw connect as plugins wherever you run them rather than as hosted harnesses. Hosted-agent compute and model-credit pricing is not shown on the pricing page. Telephony allowances cover the U.S. and Canada, with international numbers on custom terms, and U.S. SMS follows carrier opt-in and 10DLC rules. WhatsApp is beta and approval-only. It is a young YC company that announced a $5.3M seed round alongside the hosting launch.
Updates from Inkbox
Inkbox launched hosted agents, which give an identity its own cloud computer that wakes on incoming messages, sleeps when idle and runs scheduled jobs, and announced a $5.3M seed round led by Peak XV, according to its own blog post. It said sandboxes for agents you run yourself are coming soon.
Agents can send one-to-one WhatsApp messages, attachments, quoted replies and reactions through the API, SDKs, CLI and MCP, and reply in existing groups. Access requires approval and a dedicated personal iMessage number.
Each identity can add up to three MCP connections so supported Inkbox Voice AI voices can use external tools and context during calls. More outbound calling countries can also be enabled from the Console or API.
Developer and Startup plans can be billed annually at two months free, while included allowances and usage charges stay monthly. Upgrading from Free now removes the "Sent via Inkbox" email footer automatically.
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