How to Send Email Safely

Compose and send emails through your AI assistant with built-in safety controls: dry-run preview, rate limiting, and an optional recipient allowlist.

Check Recipients Before Sending

Before sending to unfamiliar recipients or large groups, check for potential issues:

“Check if sarah@company.com and team@company.com are available before I send”

tool: get-mail-tips
params:
  recipients: ["sarah@company.com", "team@company.com"]

This checks for out-of-office, full mailboxes, delivery restrictions, moderation, external recipients, and group sizes. See Check Recipients Before Sending for the full guide.

You can also combine this with dry-run for a complete pre-send review:

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "sarah@company.com"
  subject: "Project Update"
  body: "Hi Sarah..."
  dryRun: true
  checkRecipients: true

Preview Before Sending (Dry Run)

Always preview first to check the email looks right:

“Draft an email to sarah@company.com about the project update — don’t send it yet”

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "sarah@company.com"
  subject: "Project Alpha Update"
  body: "Hi Sarah,\n\nHere's the latest on Project Alpha..."
  dryRun: true

The dry run shows exactly what will be sent — recipients, subject, body — without actually sending. Review it, then ask your AI assistant to send.

Send an Email

“Send an email to sarah@company.com about the meeting tomorrow”

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "sarah@company.com"
  subject: "Meeting Tomorrow"
  body: "Hi Sarah,\n\nJust confirming our meeting tomorrow at 10am.\n\nCheers"

Because send-email is marked as destructive, your AI assistant will always ask for your confirmation before sending — even without dry run.

Send to Multiple Recipients

Use commas to separate addresses:

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "sarah@company.com, james@company.com"
  cc: "manager@company.com"
  subject: "Team Update"
  body: "Hi team,\n\n..."

Field	Purpose
to	Primary recipients
cc	Carbon copy — visible to all
bcc	Blind carbon copy — hidden from other recipients

Set Email Importance

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "team@company.com"
  subject: "Urgent: Server outage"
  body: "..."
  importance: "high"

Options: normal (default), high, low.

Safety Controls

Confirmation Prompt

Every send triggers a confirmation prompt in your AI assistant. You must explicitly approve before the email leaves your outbox. This is enforced by the MCP destructiveHint annotation — it cannot be bypassed.

Rate Limiting

Set a per-session send limit to prevent runaway sends:

OUTLOOK_MAX_EMAILS_PER_SESSION=10

Add this to your MCP server environment variables. Once the limit is reached, further sends are blocked until the session restarts.

Recipient Allowlist

Restrict who your AI assistant can send to:

OUTLOOK_ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS=company.com,partner.org

With this set, emails can only be sent to addresses ending in @company.com or @partner.org. Sends to any other domain are blocked.

Save to Sent Items

By default, sent emails appear in your Sent Items folder. To suppress:

tool: send-email
params:
  to: "..."
  subject: "..."
  body: "..."
  saveToSentItems: false

Parameter Reference

Parameter	What it does	Default
to	Recipient addresses (comma-separated)	(required)
subject	Email subject line	(required)
body	Email body (plain text or HTML)	(required)
cc	CC addresses (comma-separated)	—
bcc	BCC addresses (comma-separated)	—
importance	normal, high, or low	normal
dryRun	Preview without sending	false
checkRecipients	Check recipients for issues before sending	false
saveToSentItems	Save to Sent Items folder	true

Draft Before Sending

For important emails, consider saving as a draft first — then review in Outlook before sending:

tool: draft
params:
  action: "create"
  to: "sarah@company.com"
  subject: "Project Update"
  body: "Hi Sarah..."

Then send when ready: draft(action: "send", id: "draft-id"). See Create and Manage Email Drafts for the full guide.

Tips

• Use checkRecipients: true with dryRun: true for a complete pre-send review
• For emails that need careful review, use the draft tool instead — it saves a real draft in Outlook
• Always use dryRun: true for important emails to review before sending
• Set OUTLOOK_MAX_EMAILS_PER_SESSION to prevent accidental bulk sends
• Use OUTLOOK_ALLOWED_RECIPIENTS in shared or automated environments
• HTML is supported in the body — use it for formatted emails

Related

• Create and Manage Email Drafts — save drafts for review before sending
• Check Recipients Before Sending — full mail tips guide
• Find Emails — search for emails to reply to
• Read Email Threads — read a thread before replying
• Batch Operations — bulk email operations
• Tools Reference — send-email