Skip to content

Quick Start

Your First Extraction

Point PikoClaw at any email archive:

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst
pikoclaw extract /path/to/maildir/
pikoclaw extract archive.mbox

PikoClaw auto-detects the format. Output goes to ./pikoclaw-output/wiki/.

What Gets Created

pikoclaw-output/
└── wiki/
    ├── index.md              # Overview with stats table
    ├── contacts.md           # Contact directory (sorted by activity)
    ├── contacts.json         # Machine-readable graph with metrics
    ├── threads.md            # Conversation threads by topic
    ├── calendar.md           # Calendar events timeline
    ├── network-analysis.md   # Graph intelligence (if networkx installed)
    ├── provenance.json       # Cryptographic provenance metadata
    └── emails/
        ├── all.md            # Every email, newest first
        ├── inbox.md          # Received messages
        └── sent.md           # Sent messages

Custom Output Directory

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst --output ~/Documents/email-archive

Multiple Sources

Merge multiple archives into one unified knowledge base:

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst calendar.ost archive.mbox --output ./kb

PikoClaw threads messages across all sources and builds a single contact graph.

JSON Export

Generate machine-readable output for downstream tools, LLMs, or custom analysis:

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst --json

This creates extraction.json alongside the wiki. For JSON only (no wiki):

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst --json --no-wiki

Save Attachments

Extract binary attachment data:

pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst --extract-attachments

Attachments are saved to wiki/attachments/msg-NNNNNN/ with sanitized filenames.

Limit Processing

For large archives, cap messages per source:

pikoclaw extract huge-archive.pst --max-messages 5000

Example Output

After running pikoclaw extract mailbox.pst, open wiki/index.md:

# Knowledge Base: mailbox.pst

Extracted: 2026-02-23T15:30:00+00:00
PikoClaw v0.5.0

## Summary

| Metric | Count |
|--------|-------|
| Emails | 12,847 |
| Calendar Events | 234 |
| Contacts | 342 |
| Conversation Threads | 4,291 |
| Multi-message Threads | 1,847 |

The contacts, threads, and network analysis pages link from the index for easy navigation.