Skim
A free AI email client for Windows that doesn't suck (that hard).
Minimalist, native, fast. Bring your own AI key for the assistant and co-writer. No subscriptions, free forever.
Free & open source · ~5 MB installer · no admin rights needed
Grab Skim_x.y.z_x64-setup.exe from the latest release
Website · Download · Report a bug · Contribute
Why Skim
Email clients usually come in two flavors: a browser cosplaying as an app, or a monstrous do-everything suite with ICQ-era vibes. Skim is neither:
- ⚡ Native, not Chromium. A Rust core with a system WebView2 UI (Tauri 2) — no bundled browser like Electron. The installer is a few megabytes, cold start is instant, idle memory is modest. No admin rights.
- ✂️ Half the features, cut on purpose. No calendar, no contacts manager, no rules, no filters, no snooze — none of the stuff you never actually use anyway. Fewer buttons, less cognitive load. Need a do-everything suite? Install Outlook.
- 🎯 Actions when you need them. Buttons appear only when they're useful; there's no menu bar at all. Skim's job is to surface the right action at the right moment.
- 🔒 Local and private by default. Your mail syncs over IMAP straight into a local SQLite cache. It works offline, search is instant, and nothing ever passes through anyone else's servers. Zero telemetry, zero anal probes.
- ✦ AI on your terms. Paste your own key — Anthropic (Claude), OpenRouter for models from any vendor (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, …), or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a local model (Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM) that never leaves your machine — and Skim drafts in your voice, summarizes threads, answers questions about a message, and chats across your whole mailbox with cited sources. No key? Skim is a great mail client without it. Requests go directly from your machine to the provider; the key lives in Windows Credential Manager.
- 🌍 11 languages, light & dark themes, keyboard-first.
Features
Mail
- Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, or any IMAP/SMTP server (autoconfig for the big ones)
- Google and Microsoft sign-in via OAuth (loopback + PKCE) or app password
- Multiple accounts side by side, plus a unified All inboxes view; compose from any of them with a per-message From picker
- Conversation threading (References/In-Reply-To with subject fallback)
- Archive, delete, star, read/unread — all optimistic with a durable offline queue: act instantly, Skim syncs when the network returns
- IMAP IDLE push + periodic polling; new-mail notifications with a mark-read quick action
- Lives in the tray: closing the window keeps mail syncing in the background; starts with Windows minimized (both optional)
- Compose, reply, reply-all, forward with proper threading headers
- Attachments: open, save; inline images served from the local cache
- Calendar invites get an RSVP card — Yes / No / Maybe answers the organizer the standard way, and Add to calendar opens the
.ics in whatever calendar you already use (Skim itself has none, on purpose)
- One-click Unsubscribe for mailing lists — RFC 8058 one-click POST, unsubscribe e-mail, or the link in your browser, in that order
Speed
- Instant full-text search (SQLite FTS5) over subject, sender, recipients, and bodies
Ctrl+K command palette: search-as-you-type, jump to folders, every command- Keyboard shortcuts:
j/k move · e archive · # delete · s star · u unread · r reply · Ctrl+N compose · / search — press ? for the full list
AI (bring your own key)
There's no "Skim Pro" subscription and there never will be. Paste your own key and the ✦ violet buttons come alive:
- Drafts in your voice — tell it what to say and get a finished, first-person email. Skim can sift through your last 100 sent messages, pick the most representative ones, and match how you write — greetings, sentence length, punctuation. It replies in the sender's language, even one you don't speak
- Refine in dialogue — “shorter”, “add a deadline”, “drop the exclamation marks”. Each tweak lands on the current draft, keeping everything you didn't ask to change; your hand-edits are respected too
- Ask about an email — question one message or the whole thread (up to 25 emails in context), with follow-ups. Answers come only from the content — if it's not in the conversation, it says so
- Mailbox chat — ask “which invoices are still unpaid this month?” in the palette; Skim retrieves the relevant mail (FTS5/bm25) and answers with the source emails cited as clickable chips
- AI Recap — one click digests up to 20 unread emails, what-needs-a-reply first with deadlines and cited sources, and marks them read
- Context-aware — every prompt carries the current date, weekday, time, your timezone, your UI language, and the relevant thread. “Reply that I'll make it by Friday” becomes a concrete date
- Your writer profile — set your name, pick a style (formal / friendly / concise / witty / enthusiastic) or “write exactly like me”, and give standing instructions (“sign as Nick”, “my company is called…”)
- Three ways to bring a key — Anthropic directly (Claude Sonnet 5 default, Opus 4.8, Haiku 4.5), OpenRouter with one key for every vendor (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, or any model slug you type in), or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, a gateway, or OpenAI itself — including a local model that never leaves your machine
Your key, your bill: Skim talks to the provider's API directly and adds no markup, no proxy, no accounts. The key is stored in Windows Credential Manager.
以上为 README 的开头部分。其余内容请阅读原文。 查看完整 README ↗
