Communication Tools (Email + WhatsApp)

Optional, side-effecting tools for real-world agent workflows: send, list, and read email/WhatsApp messages.

Safety first

These tools can send real messages. Keep them behind an approval boundary / allowlist.
Secrets are resolved from env vars at execution time (tool args carry env var names, not secrets).
Default toolsets in AbstractRuntime only expose these tools when explicitly enabled.

What exists today

Email tools (SMTP/IMAP)

send_email
list_emails
read_email

WhatsApp tools (v1 provider: Twilio)

send_whatsapp_message
list_whatsapp_messages
read_whatsapp_message

Importing the tools

from abstractcore.tools.comms_tools import (
    send_email,
    list_emails,
    read_email,
    send_whatsapp_message,
    list_whatsapp_messages,
    read_whatsapp_message,
)

Opt-in gating (AbstractRuntime default toolsets)

If you use AbstractRuntime’s default tool discovery/execution, comms tools are disabled unless explicitly enabled:

export ABSTRACT_ENABLE_COMMS_TOOLS=1
# or:
export ABSTRACT_ENABLE_EMAIL_TOOLS=1
export ABSTRACT_ENABLE_WHATSAPP_TOOLS=1

If you manually pass tools=[...] in your own Python host, you control the allowlist directly.

Email (Gmail example)

Send and read email via SMTP/IMAP. Passwords are read from an env var (default: EMAIL_PASSWORD).

export EMAIL_PASSWORD="xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx"  # Gmail App Password

Send an email (tool call payload)

{
  "name": "send_email",
  "arguments": {
    "smtp_host": "smtp.gmail.com",
    "smtp_port": 587,
    "use_starttls": true,
    "username": "xxx@gmail.com",
    "password_env_var": "EMAIL_PASSWORD",
    "to": "you@example.com",
    "subject": "Daily report",
    "body_text": "Hello! Here is the report..."
  }
}

List unread emails since yesterday

{
  "name": "list_emails",
  "arguments": {
    "imap_host": "imap.gmail.com",
    "imap_port": 993,
    "username": "xxx@gmail.com",
    "password_env_var": "EMAIL_PASSWORD",
    "since": "1d",
    "status": "unread",
    "limit": 20
  }
}

WhatsApp (Twilio example)

WhatsApp automation typically uses a provider (v1 uses Twilio). Credentials are read from env vars by default.

export TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID="AC..."
export TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN="..."

Send a WhatsApp message

{
  "name": "send_whatsapp_message",
  "arguments": {
    "provider": "twilio",
    "to": "+3306XXXXXXXX",
    "from_number": "+14155238886",
    "body": "Hello from AbstractCore",
    "account_sid_env_var": "TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID",
    "auth_token_env_var": "TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN"
  }
}