Reply to the last emailed message, not a note after it

[robzolkos]

On HEY for Domains a thread can hold internal notes (kind: "comment") and share notices (kind: "access_notice", posted by "Share with…"). Neither is emailed. But hey reply, hey forward, hey compose --thread-id and the TUI's reply and forward all answered the thread's last entry. When that was a note, the reply was addressed from the note — on a local HEY, hey reply <thread> --dry-run came back To: david@basecamp.com (the teammate who wrote the note) under a bare Re: instead of to the prospect. A forward was worse: it would quote the team's internal note to whoever it went to.

HEY's web app answers Topic#last_replyable_entry — the newest active entry whose entryable says replyable?, which only Message, Announcement and SignUp::Message do. The forward and bulk-reply paths in HEY use the same entry.

What changes

• mail.ReplyTarget (internal/mail/reply_target.go) mirrors that: it picks the replyable entry with the highest id (HEY's reverse_order on an unordered relation is id-descending) from the topic's own page, and only when that page has none walks Topics().GetEntriesPage newest first, bounded at 20 pages. A thread with nothing replyable is refused (not_found, "thread N has no emailed message to reply to") rather than answered from a note. An entry with no kind is treated as a message, as every entry was before HEY served one.
• Every path that picked "the latest entry" now asks it: hey reply (send, draft and --dry-run), hey compose --thread-id, hey forward, and the TUI's loadReplyContext and loadForwardContext. The reply prefill (Entries().NewReply) and the forward draft are requested for that entry only. hey bulk-reply was already right: HEY resolves its entries server-side with last_replyable_entry.
• Text output labels internal entries. --markdown, styled output, --html and the TUI thread view head a note "Note by Priya Raman" and a share notice "Marcus Lee shared this thread", each tagged not emailed, instead of a From: line. --html also carries each entry's kind as data-kind. JSON is unchanged — it already carried kind.
• Docs: hey reply / hey thread read help and agent notes, docs/cli.md, skills/hey/SKILL.md, AGENTS.md.

Seen on a local HEY (dry run only)

Before:

"entry_id": 1019247219, "subject": "Re:", "to": ["david@basecamp.com"]

After:

"entry_id": 1019247213, "subject": "Re: Quick question about Northwind's onboarding flow", "to": ["priya.shah@example.com"]

hey thread read --markdown, after:

## From: David Heinemeier Hansson — 2026-09-28T23:02 (#1019247213)
…
## David Heinemeier Hansson shared this thread — 2026-09-28T23:03 (#1019247214)

*(share notice, not emailed)*
…
## Note by Jason Fried — 2026-09-28T23:04 (#1019247217)

*(internal note, not emailed)*

hey thread read --json is byte-for-byte the same before and after.

One gap in HEY's JSON

A share notice's web view says who was added ("David added Andrea to this thread"), but neither the entry nor the message JSON carries those contacts (Access::Notice#contacts_with_access), so the label names only who shared. Also, HEY's last_replyable_entry looks only at active entries, while the entry index serves spam entries too and does not say which are which; the CLI cannot exclude a spam-marked message inside an otherwise active thread.

Independent of #383 (hey thread comment), which touches some of the same docs; the doc edits here are kept small and separate so either rebases cleanly onto the other.

---

Summary by cubic

Reply and forward now answer a thread's last emailed message — as HEY's web app does — instead of its last entry. A note or share notice posted after it used to be replied to (going to the teammate who wrote it) or forwarded out (leaking an internal note); a thread holding nothing else is refused.

• mail.ReplyTarget picks HEY's last replyable entry (message, announcement, or sign-up message) from the topic's own page, walking the entry index only when that page has none; a missing entry page is treated as a malformed response.
• Reply, forward, compose-into-thread, and the TUI's reply and forward all use it.
• --markdown, styled, --html, and the TUI thread view head notes ("Note by …") and share notices ("… shared this thread") as never emailed instead of with a From line; HTML carries each entry's kind as data-kind. JSON is unchanged.

^{Written for commit a70d2e4. Summary will update on new commits.}

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟡 Changes recommended

Nil page handling can produce a misleading not-found result, and required help/API documentation remains incomplete.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: 1 · 2

Open (3)

• Handle nil GetEntriesPage responses separately from empty pages · New
• Document compose thread targeting behavior in --help · New
• Update API inventory for GetEntriesPage and new callers · New

What changed in this PR

Updates reply and forward flows to target the latest replyable emailed entry, avoiding internal notes and share notices.

Changes:

• Adds centralized reply-target selection across CLI and TUI flows.
• Labels internal entries distinctly in terminal, Markdown, HTML, and TUI output.
• Adds documentation and regression coverage.

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File	Description
AGENTS.md	Documents reply-target and entry-label behavior.
docs/​cli.md	Updates thread and reply documentation.
skills/​hey/​SKILL.md	Updates agent guidance.
internal/​mail/​reply_target.go	Implements replyable-entry selection and labels.
internal/​mail/​reply_target_test.go	Tests target selection and kinds.
internal/​mail/​entry.go	Preserves entry kinds for presentation.
internal/​cmd/​thread_reply.go	Uses the shared target resolver.
internal/​cmd/​forward.go	Forwards the latest emailed message.
internal/​cmd/​reply.go	Updates reply help text.
internal/​cmd/​topic.go	Labels internal entries across output formats.
internal/​cmd/​html_test.go	Updates HTML expectations.
internal/​cmd/​thread_internal_entries_test.go	Adds CLI regression tests.
internal/​tui/​compose.go	Applies reply-target selection in TUI flows.
internal/​tui/​mail.go	Labels internal entries in the TUI.
internal/​tui/​compose_internal_entries_test.go	Adds TUI regression tests.

---

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[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟡 Changes recommended

Ordinary forward help and TUI documentation do not yet describe the new targeting and refusal behavior.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: 2

Open (2)

• Document message selection and refusal behavior in ordinary help · New
• Document TUI reply/forward targeting rules · New

Resolved since last review (3)

• Handle nil GetEntriesPage responses separately from empty pages
• Update API inventory for GetEntriesPage and new callers
• Document compose thread targeting behavior in --help

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟢 Approved

The targeting, pagination, account routing, output safety, documentation, and affected command paths are consistently implemented and tested.

Review effort: Balanced
Findings: None

Resolved since last review (2)

• Document TUI reply/forward targeting rules
• Document message selection and refusal behavior in ordinary help