knowledgebase-mcp

Email Reader and MCP Server

This repository contains two main projects: an Email Reader service and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for
knowledge base integration. When run with docker-compose, these services will retrieve emails from your inbox of
choice (using IMAP) and will store them in Elasticsearch for querying by the McpServer.

Overview

graph LR
    subgraph "Docker Compose Services"
        EmailReader
        Elasticsearch
        McpServer
    end

    Inboxes["Inbox(es)"] --> EmailReader
    EmailReader -- stores --> Elasticsearch
    McpServer -- queries --> Elasticsearch
    GitHubCopilot["GitHub Copilot (Agent)"] -- connects to --> McpServer

How to Run

Prerequisites

• .NET 9 SDK
• Docker and Docker Compose

Email Reader Configuration

The EmailReader service requires the following configuration in EmailReader/appsettings.json:

• Imap:Host - IMAP server hostname
• Imap:Port - IMAP server port (default: 993)
• Imap:UseSsl - Use SSL/TLS (default: true)
• Imap:Username - IMAP username
• Imap:Password - IMAP password
• Imap:Folders - Array of folder paths to process. Add sub-folders with /, e.g. Inbox/Important Emails

Alternatively you can add them to the docker-compose.yml file like this:

  email-reader:
...
    environment:
      - Elasticsearch__Url=http://elasticsearch:9200
      - Imap__0__Host=imap.example.com
...

Docker Compose

To run the projects locally, use Docker Compose. This will start both the MCP server and an Elasticsearch instance:

docker-compose up

Add Local MCP Server to VS Code for GitHub Copilot

To add the local MCP server to VS Code, create the file .vscode/mcp.json in your workspace or user settings:

{
    "servers": {
        "knowledgebase-search-emails": {
            "url": "http://localhost:5139/api/mcp"
        }
    }
}

Project Structure

EmailReader

• Reads emails from an IMAP server and indexes them into Elasticsearch
• Supports nested folder structures (e.g., "INBOX/Subfolder")
• Creates Elasticsearch index templates for optimal search performance
• Extracts email metadata: subject, body, from/to/cc/bcc addresses, attachments, and date

McpServer

• Implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
• Provides email search functionality through Elasticsearch
• Exposes search tools for GitHub Copilot integration
• Supports multi-match queries across email subject and body fields

EmailReader.Tests and McpServer.Tests

Unit tests

Technologies Used

• .NET 9 (C#)
• Elasticsearch 9.0.3 (for storing and searching email content)
• MailKit (for retrieving emails via IMAP)
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) for server-client integration (tested with GitHub Copilot)
• xUnit (for unit testing)