Agent Relay

Agent Relay is where your AI agents ask permission. Agents draft emails, request spend, and deliver finished work into a private, end-to-end encrypted inbox; nothing leaves, sends, or charges until you approve it. Anything that can make HTTP requests can use it — Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, cron jobs, webhooks, or your own backend — and it is open source under MIT, so you can run it yourself.

An optional Email Review Relay plugin adds a human-in-the-loop outbound email path: agents submit encrypted drafts, you preview them in the same inbox, then approve or reject before anything is sent. It is enabled on arelay.app; self-hosters can turn it on with EMAIL_REVIEW_RELAY_ENABLED=true (setup).

Two ways to use it:

• arelay.app — hosted service; sign up and connect your agents (no deployment).
• Self-host — run this repo on your own infrastructure under the MIT license.

Contents

Using arelay.app

• Get started
• Connect your AI agent
• Encryption (required)
• Email Review Relay
• Features

Self-hosting

• Development setup
• Environment variables
• Deploy to production
• Plugins
• Tech stack

Reference

• Contributing & help wanted
• Security model
• Terms of Service · Privacy Policy
• Contributing
• License

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Using arelay.app

The hosted service at arelay.app handles deployment, database, storage, backups, TLS, and updates. The security model is the same as self-hosting: encrypted deliveries are decrypted in your browser, not on the server. The one exception is approving an email draft: the decrypted email is sent to the server in that request so it can be delivered, and is never stored as plaintext. Email itself is not end-to-end encrypted, so the recipient's mail provider sees the same content permanently.

Get started

1. Open arelay.app and create an account with a passkey.
2. Accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy during signup (required on the hosted service).
3. Complete Set up encryption on first portal visit (passkey + recovery key).
4. In the portal, open Account → Agent tokens and create a named token for each agent or integration.
5. Copy the token once — it is shown only at creation time.
6. Your inbox updates automatically when agents send deliveries (refresh every few seconds).

Sign-in uses passkeys (WebAuthn), not passwords or social login. No Google, Apple, or Microsoft account is required. If terms or privacy are updated later, existing accounts are prompted to accept the new versions before continuing.

Connect your AI agent

Agent Relay is agent-agnostic: any client that speaks HTTP and follows the E2EE envelope format can deliver. Pick the path that fits your setup:

| Integration path | Best for | | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | CLI & MCP server | Fastest start: one command from any shell, or native MCP tools in Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude Desktop | | Agent skill | Cursor, Codex, Claude Code, Hermes Agent, and other Agent Skills hosts | | Direct HTTP API | Custom scripts, backends, webhooks, scheduled jobs | | Platform plugins | Platform-specific hooks, e.g. Hermes cron delivery |

Whichever path you choose, set these where your agent runs — never commit tokens:

| Variable | Value for arelay.app | | -------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | ARELAY_URL | https://arelay.app | | ARELAY_TOKEN | Token from Account → Agent tokens |

Every request uses Authorization: Bearer <ARELAY_TOKEN>.

CLI & MCP server

The @arelay/cli npm package wraps the API and all envelope encryption. Deliver from any shell:

export ARELAY_TOKEN=ar_...   # from Account → Agent tokens
npx -y @arelay/cli send report.md --title "Q2 revenue report"

Or register it as an MCP server so agents can deliver work natively (deliver_to_inbox, list_inbox_sessions, submit_email_draft tools):

# Claude Code
claude mcp add arelay --env ARELAY_TOKEN=ar_... -- npx -y @arelay/cli mcp

npx -y @arelay/cli check verifies the token and encryption setup. The package also exports a typed SDK (import { ArelayClient } from '@arelay/cli') — see its README. Self-hosters point it at their deployment with ARELAY_URL.

Agent skill

Install the agent-relay skill (requires portal E2EE setup):

npx skills add mmmikael/arelay-skills --skill agent-relay -g -y

Hermes Agent:

hermes skills tap add mmmikael/arelay-skills
hermes skills install mmmikael/arelay-skills/agent-relay

Direct HTTP API

Anything that can POST JSON can deliver: fetch the public key from GET /api/agent/e2ee/config, encrypt locally, create a session, and upload artifacts. See the API reference and the bundled Node reference scripts in the skill for working encryption code.

Platform plugins

Hermes cron (--deliver arelay) needs arelay-hermes-plugin. Cron runs in the gateway, not the interactive CLI — put credentials in ~/.hermes/.env (including AGENT_RELAY_HOME_CHANNEL=https://arelay.app), install the plugin, then restart the gateway:

hermes plugins install mmmikael/arelay-hermes-plugin --enable
# ~/.hermes/.env: AGENT_API_TOKEN, AGENT_RELAY_URL, AGENT_RELAY_HOME_CHANNEL
#   (the Hermes plugin reads its own variables, not the CLI's ARELAY_* ones)
hermes gateway start
/cron add "0 9 * * *" "Your prompt. Never use [SILENT]." --deliver arelay

Encryption (required)

All agent deliveries must be end-to-end encrypted. Complete Set up encryption during Get started; unlock in the browser when viewing the inbox. Agents fetch your public key from GET /api/agent/e2ee/config and upload encrypted sessions and artifacts. Plaintext agent payloads return 400 (plaintext_not_allowed); unconfigured accounts get 428 (e2ee_required).

Email Review Relay

On arelay.app, agents POST encrypted email drafts; each appears as an inbox session you Approve (send via your Cloudflare credentials) or Reject.

1. Account → Email sending (Cloudflare API) — save your Cloudflare Account ID and API token (encrypted server-side; used only when you approve).
2. Use the agent-relay skill — drafts use the same E2EE envelopes as file deliveries.

API details and self-host setup: Plugins.

Features

• Mobile-friendly email-style inbox
• Email Review Relay: agents draft outbound mail; you approve before send
• Artifact preview and download (text, Markdown, HTML, PDF, images)
• Sandboxed HTML/Markdown preview (external links and media stripped)
• End-to-end encrypted deliveries only
• Passkey sign-in (one passkey per account)
• Named agent API tokens with per-token revoke
• Storage limits: 25 MB per artifact, 500 MB per account

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Self-hosting

Run Agent Relay on your own PostgreSQL and S3-compatible storage. Useful when you need full data residency control or a private deployment.

Development setup

npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm run db:migrate:local
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:5173 and create an account with a passkey. Without Cloudflare or SMTP configured, verification codes are printed to the server console.

Database schema changes are managed with Drizzle migrations. Edit the Drizzle schema, generate a migration with npm run db:generate, review the generated SQL, then apply it with npm run db:migrate:local.

Run unit tests:

npm test

To test migrations against a disposable empty database, set TEST_DATABASE_URL and run:

npm run db:smoke

Environment variables

| Variable | Description | | ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | SESSION_SECRET | Secret for signing human session cookies. Generate with openssl rand -hex 32. | | SESSION_VERSION | Bump this to invalidate existing human sessions. | | ORIGIN | Public site URL for CSRF checks and absolute links. In production, set to your canonical URL, for example https://arelay.app. | | WEBAUTHN_RP_NAME | Passkey relying party display name. Defaults to Agent Relay. | | WEBAUTHN_RP_ID | Passkey relying party ID. For production on arelay.app, use arelay.app. | | WEBAUTHN_ORIGIN | Expected passkey origin, for example https://arelay.app. | | DATABASE_URL | PostgreSQL connection string.