Symptoms#
- Messages landing in spam despite previously good placement
- Bounces mentioning policy, authentication, or reputation
- Provider dashboards showing a drop in reputation or authentication pass rate
Diagnosis steps#
- Confirm the configuration is live: query DNS from an external resolver and check the sending platform's settings page.
- Send to a seed mailbox and read the full headers, especially Authentication-Results.
- Compare the domains in From, Return-Path, and DKIM d= for alignment.
- Check provider dashboards (Google Postmaster Tools, Microsoft SNDS) for reputation and error rates.
- Review recent changes: new vendors, DNS edits, list imports, volume spikes.
Likely causes#
- Granting full send access on day one.
- No kill switch when the agent misclassifies a thread.
Fix and re-verify#
- Grant the agent read scope first; add draft scope, then send scope only for defined categories.
- Issue per-agent tokens so access can be revoked individually.
- Require approval for messages to new external recipients.
- Log every action with the reasoning the agent produced.
Frequently asked questions#
What is MCP in email?
Model Context Protocol lets AI clients call tools like 'search inbox' or 'draft reply' through a standard interface. MailMaid exposes an MCP server with scoped tokens.