Premail

Premail is a privacy-first email companion app that uses AI to automatically classify and organize incoming email before inbox noise becomes overwhelming. Premail is not an email client. It works alongside the email apps people already use, such as Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail, or other clients connected to their accounts. Instead of replacing the inbox experience, Premail operates as an intelligent filtering and automation layer that helps keep the underlying mailbox organized. The core idea is simple: email filtering should understand what a message actually is, not merely whether it contains a certain word, comes from a certain sender, or matches a rigid rule. Traditional email filters are useful for predictable cases, but they break down quickly when messages require context. Premail uses AI classification to evaluate incoming mail based on meaning and intent. Users define rule packs describing the kinds of messages they care about and how those messages should be handled, while Premail performs the classification automatically. This makes Premail particularly useful for the enormous category of email that is technically legitimate but still unwanted. Marketing messages, newsletters, automated notifications, repetitive account alerts, receipts, transactional messages, promotional campaigns, and other machine-generated email may all pass normal spam filters while still overwhelming an inbox. Premail approaches the problem from the user's perspective. Instead of asking only, "Is this spam?" it can help answer the much more useful question: "Do I want this in my inbox?" That distinction matters. A message can come from a legitimate company, pass authentication checks, comply with email standards, and still be noise. AI classification allows Premail to reason about those messages in ways that conventional sender lists and keyword filters cannot. Premail currently works with major email providers including Gmail, iCloud Mail, and Outlook. Because it operates independently of the user's preferred email client, people can continue reading and sending email exactly where they already do. Premail focuses on the background work of classification, filtering, and organization. Privacy and user control are central to its design. Premail runs as a desktop application and lets users configure their own AI provider rather than requiring all email to pass through a proprietary Premail-hosted AI service. It supports providers including OpenAI and Anthropic, allowing users to bring their own API credentials and choose the model that performs classification. Premail can scan the models available through a configured OpenAI or Anthropic account, reducing the guesswork involved in model setup. Classification has also been optimized for GPT-5-family models, with GPT-5 mini recommended as a strong balance of classification quality, speed, and cost. Rule packs are the foundation of Premail's filtering system. They let users describe categories and behaviors in natural terms rather than building large collections of fragile manual filters. Premail continually improves the prompts and classification logic behind these rule packs to make decisions more consistent and reliable. Premail also includes practical tools for managing the application itself. Backup and Restore allows users to preserve their Premail configuration, recover it later, or move it to another computer without rebuilding their setup from scratch. Premail can run automatically when the computer starts, allowing classification to continue quietly in the background. The larger problem Premail is designed to address is that the modern inbox has become an adversarial environment. Spam filters are reasonably good at identifying obvious junk, phishing, and malware. They are much less effective at dealing with the flood of legitimate automated email competing for attention every day. Companies have strong incentives to keep sending messages, notifications, promotions, reminders, and engagement campaigns. The recipient is left to manage the resulting clutter. Premail gives that control back to the user. Instead of relying entirely on the priorities of an email provider, users can define what matters to them and let AI continuously apply those preferences to incoming mail. Their existing email client remains the place where they read and send email. Premail simply makes the mailbox behind it cleaner, quieter, and easier to manage. Premail is built by Senternet as part of a broader effort to create software that gives individuals more control over the automated systems competing for their attention and data. Premail doesn't replace your inbox. It makes your inbox better.