thunderbird-ai-compose-server

Server for Thunderbird AI Compose plugin

This server should be run before using the Thunderbird AI Compose Thunderbird plugin. You can either selfhost this server on a VPS you own or you can run it locally on your machine.

Important

I do not provide a public instance of this server for you to use nor do I provide support for selfhosting this server.

Running the server

You can either run the server directly or download a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

Running from source

1. Make sure you have Go installed (version 1.25 or higher).

2. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/luciferreeves/thunderbird-ai-compose-server.git
   cd thunderbird-ai-compose-server

3. Install dependencies:

   go mod download

4. Build the server:

   go build -o thunderbird-ai-compose-server

5. Run the server: Make sure to set up the environment variables as described in the Setting up the server section before running the server.

   ./thunderbird-ai-compose-server

Running from a prebuilt binary

1. Download the latest release for your operating system from the releases page.
2. Make sure to set up the environment variables as described in the Setting up the server section before running the server.
3. Run the binary:

   ./thunderbird-ai-compose-server

Setting up the server

In order to setup the server, copy the .env.example file to .env and fill in the required environment variables. See the following table for details on environment variables:

Variable	Description	Required	Default Value
PORT	The port the server will run on	❌	3000
PROVIDER	The AI provider to use. See Supported Providers	❌	Gemini
Model	The model to use for the selected provider. See Supported Models	❌	gemini-2.5-flash
API_KEY	The API key for the selected provider.	✅	N/A

Supported Providers

Provider	Environment Variable Value	Available
Gemini	gemini	✅
OpenAI	openai	❌

Note

Models marked with a ❌ are not yet implemented, but are planned for future releases.

Supported Models

Provider	Supported Models
Gemini	See here for available models. The default is gemini-2.5-flash.
OpenAI	Unimplemented

Running the Server as a Service

You can run the server as a systemd service for easier management. Create a file named thunderbird-ai-compose-server.service in /etc/systemd/system/ with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Thunderbird AI Compose Server
After=network.target
Wants=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0
StartLimitBurst=3
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
User=your-username
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/thunderbird-ai-compose-server
ExecStart=/path/to/thunderbird-ai-compose-server/thunderbird-ai-compose-server
EnvironmentFile=/path/to/thunderbird-ai-compose-server/.env
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure to replace your-username with your actual username and update the paths accordingly.

Then, enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable thunderbird-ai-compose-server
sudo systemctl start thunderbird-ai-compose-server