Startup issues

[mrocklin]

Installation was easy. I really like the next steps proposed

$ curl -fsSL https://msgvault.io/install.sh | bash                                                                                                                                                                ~
Installing msgvault...

Platform: darwin/arm64
Install directory: /Users/mrocklin/.local/bin

Fetching latest release...
Found version: v0.1.2
Downloading msgvault_0.1.2_darwin_arm64.tar.gz...
Checksum verified
Extracting...
Installed from GitHub release

Installation complete!

Get started:
  msgvault init-db
  msgvault add-account you@gmail.com
  msgvault sync-full you@gmail.com --limit 100
  msgvault tui

The next step also works

$ msgvault init-db                                                                                                                                                                                                ~
time=2026-02-02T10:11:33.433-06:00 level=INFO msg="initializing database" path=/Users/mrocklin/.msgvault/msgvault.db
time=2026-02-02T10:11:33.437-06:00 level=INFO msg="database initialized successfully"
Database: /Users/mrocklin/.msgvault/msgvault.db
  Messages:    0
  Threads:     0
  Attachments: 0
  Labels:      0
  Sources:     0
  Size:        0.00 MB

This one unfortunately doesn't though

$ msgvault add-account mrocklin@gmail.com                                                                                                                                                                         ~
Error: oauth.client_secrets not configured in config.toml
Usage:
  msgvault add-account <email> [flags]

Flags:
      --headless   Use device code flow for headless environments
  -h, --help       help for add-account

Global Flags:
      --config string   config file (default: ~/.msgvault/config.toml)
  -v, --verbose         verbose output

Probably I'm doing something silly, and I can probably get past this, but I thought you'd want to know the startup friction.

[wesm]

https://www.msgvault.io/guides/oauth-setup/

You have to obtain the OAuth client secret from the Google Cloud Console. It's a bit painful but it's a one time setup. I'll document this better on the website and README, and add more informative explanation of what's going on in the CLI

[wesm]

I'm not sure what would logistically be required to get msgvault registered as an official Google-approved OAuth application so that people don't have to do this, but I'll look into it.

see also https://github.com/steipete/gogcli?tab=readme-ov-file#quick-start

[mrocklin]

Yeah, I actually also did this (I maintain my own gmail client) but found it cumbersome.

🤔 unasked-for advice, but I wonder if IMAP would be good enough here? Personally speaking I'd be ok losing labels (I think that's the only gmail specific feature we'd lose?)

[mrocklin]

as an official Google-approved OAuth application so that people don't have to do this, but I'll look into it.

I'm not sure, but this might not suffice. I think that this might work if you were to route all of the traffic through a single computer you control. I'm not sure if it'll work to get GMail to trust everyone's computer who is using msgvault. (I'm not familiar enough with this space though to have confidence)

[wesm]

The PR #5 at least improves the CLI error message. I'll look into IMAP and other options. I think the safest way is for users to maintain their own OAuth chain of custody.

❯ msgvault add-account foo@bar.com                                    🐹 v1.25.5 🔋 69% 11:22:12 
Error: OAuth client secrets file not found.
To use msgvault, you need a Google Cloud OAuth credential:
  1. Follow the setup guide: https://msgvault.io/guides/oauth-setup/
  2. Download the client_secret.json file
  3. Add to your config.toml:
       [oauth]
       client_secrets = "/path/to/client_secret.json"
Usage:
  msgvault add-account <email> [flags]

Flags:
      --headless   Use device code flow for headless environments
  -h, --help       help for add-account

Global Flags:
      --config string   config file (default: ~/.msgvault/config.toml)
  -v, --verbose         verbose output