---
id: plugin-system/emailaccounts-is-created-by-the-platform-for
title: "`email_accounts/` is created by the PLATFORM for every account, and should be the plugin's job"
theme: plugin-system
status: open
created: 2026-08-18
date_source: section
order: 2
---

**`email_accounts/` is created by the PLATFORM for every account, and should be the plugin's job.**
`USER_DIRS` in `data-path.ts` pre-creates it at 0700 for every user, whether or not the email plugin
is installed — so a core install provisions a directory named for a plugin it does not have.

Ownership should invert: the plugin provisions its own storage, in all three moments —

1. **on plugin install**, for accounts that already exist;
2. **on user provisioning**, for accounts created afterwards;
3. **lazily**, the first time a provisioned user opens the plugin, so a machine that missed either of
   the above still heals itself.

The third is the one that makes the other two non-critical, and it belongs in the email sidecar
rather than in the platform's account handler.

This is entangled with the `email_db` leak below — core reads that directory today, so the plugin
cannot become its sole owner until that is resolved too. Do them together.