1 [[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
2 # Approaches to initial tagging of messages
4 This page collects scripts and strategies for organizing mail using
5 notmuch and doing automated initial tagging.
7 Here's a very general and ad-hoc approach to initial message tagging.
8 The `[new]` config section allows you to control which tags new messages
9 receive. This sets all new messages to get the *new* tag:
14 After running `notmuch new`, all new messages will be marked *new*.
15 You can then do various tag post-processing by just acting on messages
16 with that tag. For instance, a post-processing script might do the
19 # immediately archive all messages from "me"
20 notmuch tag -new -- tag:new and from:me@example.com
22 # delete all messages from a spammer:
23 notmuch tag +deleted -- tag:new and from:spam@spam.com
25 # tag all message from notmuch mailing list
26 notmuch tag +notmuch -- tag:new and to:notmuch@notmuchmail.org
28 # finally, retag all "new" messages "inbox" and "unread"
29 notmuch tag +inbox +unread -new -- tag:new
31 Since the post-processing is only acting on a few messages, it is
32 generally extremely fast.
34 You can use the `post-new` hook, which is automatically run after `notmuch new`,
35 to do post-processing. See `man notmuch-hooks` for details on hooks.
40 * [Carl Worth's approach to tagging](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/2010/001691.html). It
41 is email id:87r5o8stbj.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org in the notmuch
42 mailing list archives.
45 * [One user's setup](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/2010/001690.html)
46 (id:87hbp5j9dv.fsf@hackervisions.org), which includes using the
47 inbox tag as a "new mail" flag.
49 * [Another user's setup](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/2011/003976.html)
50 (id:"87tyfu3k5a.fsf@gmail.com"), which uses a dedicated tag for
51 marking new mail, which is then sorted with a python script using
52 Bogofilter for spam detection. This is generally a great deal
53 faster than a shell-scripted approach. This approach introduces a
54 workflow built around a "watch" tag. Here, the user is only
55 presented with threads as they are started. At this point the user
56 can choose to watch the thread, in which case future messages will
57 be tagged with "inbox", or ignore it. This provides an excellent
58 means for dealing with a large flux of messages with a low
61 * [afew](https://github.com/teythoon/afew) is an initial tagging
62 solution that should work out of the box for most basic tagging
63 needs (mailinglist handling, killed thread handling, autoarchiving
64 of sent mails) and has some fancy features (e.g. mail classification
65 using bayesian filters).
67 # Notmuch Delivery Agent -- `notmuch-deliver`
69 The [Notmuch Delivery Agent](http://github.com/alip/notmuch-deliver/)
70 ([announcement](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/2010/002871.html)) is
71 a tool for delivering emails to maildir, add them to the Notmuch database, and