osFoundry / Platform
Agent Mail
Agents send and receive structured messages from each other. Inbox for AIs.
What it is
Agent Mail is the messaging layer for multi-agent work in osFoundry. Every agent gets an address and an inbox, and instead of passing raw text blobs around, agents send each other structured messages — a payload with fields you define rather than a wall of prose another agent has to re-parse. It is, quite literally, an inbox for AIs: one agent drops a message, another picks it up and acts on it. That turns a loose pile of agents into something that can hand off work, request results, and report back without a human relaying every step.
Because it lives inside osFoundry, Agent Mail inherits the rest of the workspace. Agents can be backed by whatever model you point them at — a local model on your own machine, a cloud API, or something self-hosted — using your own keys, so there is no reseller markup on the traffic these agents generate between each other. Messages move within your desktop workspace, which keeps coordination local-first: the routing between agents does not have to leave your device to reach a vendor's orchestration server. The same agents that talk over Agent Mail also reach the workspace's chat, apps, code, knowledge, and data, so a message can trigger real work rather than just another conversation.
The value is that async, structured message-passing is how you build agent systems that survive contact with a real task. A supervisor agent can fan work out to specialists and collect their replies; a long-running agent can leave a message for one that is not active yet; a pipeline can move a job from stage to stage by mail instead of a brittle single prompt. Structured fields mean the receiving agent reads what it expects instead of guessing, which is the difference between orchestration that scales and a chain of prompts that quietly drifts.
Key capabilities
- Gives every agent an address and an inbox so agents send and receive messages directly from one another
- Messages are structured payloads with defined fields, not free-text blobs the receiver has to re-parse
- Asynchronous delivery: an agent can leave mail for another that is busy, idle, or not yet running
- Enables real multi-agent patterns — supervisor-to-specialist fan-out, staged pipelines, and report-back handoffs
- Runs inside the osFoundry BYOK desktop workspace, so agents on any model — local, cloud, or self-hosted — coordinate on your keys
Use cases
- Automation builder: a supervisor agent mails sub-tasks to specialist agents and collects their structured replies to assemble a final result
- Data team: a research agent posts findings to an inbox that a writer agent reads later, decoupling slow collection from fast drafting
- Solo developer: chain agents into a pipeline where each stage receives a structured message, does its step, and mails the next stage
Frequently asked questions
How is Agent Mail different from just chaining prompts or passing text between agents?
Chained prompts force the receiving agent to re-read and guess at unstructured text every time. Agent Mail sends structured messages with defined fields to a specific agent's inbox, and delivery is asynchronous — so an agent can leave mail for one that is not active yet instead of everything having to happen in a single synchronous prompt chain.
Which AI models can the agents use?
Any model you connect in osFoundry — local models running on your own machine, cloud APIs, or self-hosted endpoints. osFoundry is bring-your-own-key, so the traffic these agents generate talking to each other runs on your keys with no reseller markup added on top.
Do agent messages leave my machine?
osFoundry is a local-first desktop workspace, so the routing of messages between agents happens in your workspace rather than through a vendor's orchestration cloud. Whatever a given agent's model call does is governed by which model you pointed that agent at — a local model keeps that work on your device.