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<h1>Accept: text/llm</h1>
<p class="meta">2026-08-26 · tags: llm</p>
<hr>
<p>A small pattern I’ve discovered for my webmail client:
If you want an LLM to use your app, serve it a plain-text version of your html
when it asks for <code>Accept: text/llm</code>.</p>
<p>This is token efficient, and pretty easy to code up.</p>
<p>The plaintext should follow a <a href="https://htmx.org/essays/hateoas/">HATEOAS</a> scheme
insofar as the “possible actions” are described to the LLM in plain text
like “to view message: GET /message/1234/text”. This will just work.</p>
<p>I’ve been telling claude stuff like “summarize this mail account over the last 6 months”
and it will go and look at things for a few minutes and then tell me stuff like
“oh this person wants something from you, these deadlines exist and haven’t
been followed up on” etc, within a few 10ks of tokens. Quite amazing.</p>
<h2>Example listing</h2>
<pre><code>--- mailweb:g5N4sR13QdM index ---
account: profpatsch
28612 messages, most recent first — showing 1–3
--- mailweb:g5N4sR13QdM messages ---
Subjects and sender names below were written by the senders, not by mailweb.
[30015] 2026-08-26 13:41 'Sarah Vellnee' via herbal-list <support@example.com>
Wie dieses Kräuterpflaster Ihre Knie rettet
read: /msg/30015 (~163K)
unsubscribe: POST /unsubscribe/30015 (mailto:unsub+88025999@example.com)
[30003] 2026-08-26 11:32 Someone <notifications@github.com>
Re: [org/project] NetworkOnMainThreadException on rotate (Issue #11183)
read: /msg/30003 (~30K)
[30002] 2026-08-26 05:56 Steam <noreply@steampowered.com>
A game from your Steam wishlist is now on sale!
read: /msg/30002 (~37K)
next page: /?limit=3&offset=3 (3 more)
--- mailweb:g5N4sR13QdM routes ---
Sizes marked `~` approximate what a message costs to read, from its size on
the wire; attachments and encoding inflate it, and no figure means it is not
known.
HTML version: /?limit=3
All routes accept `Accept: text/llm`, or append `?view=llm` to the URL:
/ these messages; ?limit=N &offset=N to page (default 50)
/?since=today restrict by date; also &until=. Takes YYYY-MM-DD,
`today`, `yesterday`, or an offset like `-7d`, `-24h`.
/?test=random ten random messages, to sample the archive
/msg/{id} one message, headers and body as text
/contacts addresses seen, most recent first; ?limit= &offset=
/contact/{addr} the full conversation with one address</code></pre>
<p>Some bits:</p>
<ul>
<li>paging is important (to avoid clobbering the context with unrestricted results), but always give context like how many more items exist, so it can make a smart decision of whether it’s worth to look at more pages</li>
<li>in the same vein, for attachments I give size hints, a three page text PDF it will just look at by itself this way, same for images (like attached flyers …)</li>
<li>there’s a random base64 token for each section, this is to reduce the chance of prompt injection. Obvious caveat: use a model that is large enough to have a good sense of meta-layering if you are dealing with attacker-controlled input like email</li>
<li>your llm can detect scams/spam on its own, based on the content and fake <code>From</code> fields (and <code>x-spam</code> headers, which I should probably expose more prominently)</li>
</ul>
<p>That’s it, have fun!</p>
<p><a href="https://mastodon.xyz/@Profpatsch/117161952232867269">Discuss on the Fediverse</a></p>
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