Email Navi back — two-way email is live
A couple of weeks ago we shipped email delivery — Navi could send you reports. Today we're closing the loop: you can email Navi too. Reply to a report, forward a doc for analysis, or cold-email a request from your phone. It all lands in chat.
When we shipped outbound email the most common piece of feedback was the obvious one: what about the other direction? Navi can send me my Monday briefing, but when I want to ask a follow-up, I still have to open the app. That's fine at a desk. It's not fine on a phone in an Uber.
So now you can just hit reply.
The two ways to email Navi
1. Reply to anything Navi sent you. Every Navi email is threaded. Replying drops your message into the same chat session that produced the original, so Navi has full context — what it sent, what the cron job does, what you've been working on. Navi's response comes back as a reply in the same email thread, so your inbox stays tidy.
Navi does the work in that same chat session (you can open it in the app and watch if you want), then emails you back the one-pager. Same thread, same conversation.
2. Cold-email Navi from scratch. Send a fresh email to reports@send.naviwork.ai and Navi spins up a new chat session for it. The subject becomes the session name; the body becomes your opening message. Great for "I'm away from my laptop and just remembered something" moments.
Pull every Linear issue assigned to me across all my teams, group by project, flag anything older than two weeks, and send it back as a PDF I can forward to my manager.
Attachments — the part that changes how you work
Forward any email with an attachment, or attach a file to a new email to Navi, and it shows up in the chat for Navi to use. Images, PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, photos from your phone — all fair game.
Images and PDFs are visible to Navi directly (it can read the content, extract text, answer questions about them). Other files land in Navi's sandbox where Navi can convert, parse, or analyze them with code.
Please turn this into a clean Google Doc with headings and action items, share it with the team, and email me the link.
Summarize the key terms in this contract, flag anything non-standard, and email the summary back. Don't do anything to the PDF itself.
What is this error telling me, and what should I check first?
Limits: up to 25 MB per email, 10 MB per file. Beyond that Navi will tell you which file was too large.
How Navi knows it's really you
Navi will only act on email from an address that matches a user account. If you@yourcompany.com signed up with that address, emails from that address work. Emails from a different address, or forwarded through a different account, get ignored — Navi never wakes up for a stranger.
There's also DMARC authentication on every inbound message. If an email fails sender verification (spoofed, forwarded through a shady relay), Navi drops it. You don't have to think about any of this — it just works.
Two nice side effects
Your calendar agent just got mobile. If Navi emails you a briefing at 7:30am and you realize you want to reschedule something, you can handle it from the train. Reply with "Move the 10am with Priya to 2pm and let her know why" and it's done before you walk into the office.
Cron jobs become conversational. The Friday team roll-up used to be "read it, then go into chat if you want to change anything." Now it's a real email you can reply to: "Great — can you also include anything tagged 'customer' this week?" Navi updates and sends the revised version.
A few things worth knowing
Use the address you signed up with. Replies have to come from the email you use for Navi. If you've got a work email and a personal email, only the one tied to your account will work.
Gmail threading is the happy path. Replies thread as the same conversation in Gmail. New emails show up as fresh threads. If you want Navi to treat a reply as a new chat session instead of continuing the old one, start a new email.
You can still watch it in the app. Everything Navi does over email also shows up in the chat session in realtime. It's not a separate channel — it's the same session, just with a different front door.
The shape this takes
The goal was never to make Navi "an email client." It's to make Navi work wherever you are. If you're at the desk, chat is fastest. If you're on a phone, email is fastest. If you're going to be away for an hour and you want Navi to dig into something in the background, email lets you kick it off and come back to a finished answer in your inbox.
Outbound email made the inbox a place where finished work lands. Inbound email makes it a place where you can start new work too. That's the full loop.
Questions? Stuck? Want to share something you built?
Come join the Navi community — the fastest way to get help or compare notes with other users:
- Discord — real-time chat with the Navi team and other users
- r/naviwork on Reddit — longer-form tips, playbooks, and Q&A
- Navi Facebook group — for folks who prefer Facebook