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feat(backend): transactional email send with user_id recipient#9010

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feat(backend): transactional email send with user_id recipient#9010
cbnsndwch wants to merge 8 commits into
mainfrom
serge/clerk-email-sdk

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@cbnsndwch

@cbnsndwch cbnsndwch commented Jun 26, 2026

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Summary

Adds internal transactional email sending with a recipient that can be addressed either by a literal email address or by a Clerk user ID (resolved to the user's primary email server-side).

  • clerk_go: internal POST /v1/email, gated behind the transactional_email_enabled instance flag. to is a discriminated union (address | user_id); a user_id is resolved to the user's primary email on the server.
  • clerk-sdk-go (v3): Email client with a Recipient (Address or UserID).
  • @clerk/backend: experimental clerkClient.emails.create; to accepts { address } or { userId }.

Verified end-to-end against the local stack: both the address and user_id paths return 200, with user_id resolving server-side.

Changes in this repo

Experimental @clerk/backend emails.create; to accepts { address } or { userId }.

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • New Features
    • Added an experimental transactional email API to the backend client via emails.create().
    • Supports recipients by email address or user ID (type-enforced), optional replyTo and subject, and HTML/text content (with HTML preferred when both are provided).
    • Returned email resources can now include recipient user information when available.
  • Tests
    • Added automated backend API tests covering snake-cased request payloads and camelCase response mapping across multiple send scenarios.

Companion PRs

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vercel Bot commented Jun 26, 2026

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Project Deployment Actions Updated (UTC)
clerk-js-sandbox Ready Ready Preview, Comment Jun 26, 2026 3:47am
swingset Ready Ready Preview, Comment Jun 26, 2026 3:47am

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@changeset-bot

changeset-bot Bot commented Jun 26, 2026

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🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: ca23a31

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 10 packages
Name Type
@clerk/backend Minor
@clerk/astro Patch
@clerk/express Patch
@clerk/fastify Patch
@clerk/hono Patch
@clerk/nextjs Patch
@clerk/nuxt Patch
@clerk/react-router Patch
@clerk/tanstack-react-start Patch
@clerk/testing Patch

Not sure what this means? Click here to learn what changesets are.

Click here if you're a maintainer who wants to add another changeset to this PR

@coderabbitai

coderabbitai Bot commented Jun 26, 2026

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Review Change Stack

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Repository YAML (base), Repository UI (inherited)

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 4c068a8a-1bc3-49cd-b15d-041fb8359dd2

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 01ba8cb and 51ca7ab.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)
  • .changeset/clerk-email-send.md
✅ Files skipped from review due to trivial changes (1)
  • .changeset/clerk-email-send.md

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR adds clerkClient.emails.create() to the backend SDK, wires it into the client factory, updates Email parsing for user_id, adds request/response tests for recipient shapes, and records the release note in a changeset.

Changes

Transactional email API

Layer / File(s) Summary
Request contract and response mapping
packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts, packages/backend/src/api/resources/Email.ts
Defines CreateEmailParams, implements EmailApi.create() for POST /email, and maps data.user_id into Email.userId.
Client export and factory wiring
packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/index.ts, packages/backend/src/api/factory.ts
Re-exports EmailApi and adds an emails client to createBackendApiClient.
Tests and release note
packages/backend/src/api/__tests__/EmailApi.test.ts, .changeset/clerk-email-send.md, .changeset/email-cr-fixes.md
Adds MSW/Vitest coverage for to.address, to.userId, and text request bodies, verifies camelCase response mapping, and records the @clerk/backend minor changeset entry.

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant createBackendApiClient
  participant EmailApi
  participant ClerkBackendAPI as Clerk Backend API
  participant Email as Email resource
  createBackendApiClient->>EmailApi: emails.create(params)
  EmailApi->>ClerkBackendAPI: POST /v1/email
  ClerkBackendAPI-->>EmailApi: Email JSON
  EmailApi->>Email: fromJSON(data.user_id)
  Email-->>createBackendApiClient: created Email resource
Loading

Estimated review effort

🎯 3 (Moderate) | ⏱️ ~20 minutes

Poem

Hop, hop—an email whisked away,
With user_id tucked in the hay.
emails.create() gave a bright new spark,
While tests and mappings danced in the dark.
🐇✨ One carrot-cheer for the backend arc.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name Status Explanation Resolution
Docstring Coverage ⚠️ Warning Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly matches the main change: adding backend transactional email sending with user ID recipients.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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@pkg-pr-new

pkg-pr-new Bot commented Jun 26, 2026

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@clerk/astro

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@clerk/backend

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@clerk/chrome-extension

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@clerk/clerk-js

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@clerk/eslint-plugin

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@clerk/express

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@clerk/hono

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commit: ca23a31

@cbnsndwch cbnsndwch changed the title feat(email): transactional email send with user_id recipient feat(backend): transactional email send with user_id recipient Jun 26, 2026
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API Changes Report

Generated by Break Check on 2026-06-26T03:49:06.185Z

Summary

Metric Count
Packages analyzed 19
Packages with changes 0
🔴 Breaking changes 0
🟡 Non-breaking changes 0
🟢 Additions 0

No API Changes Detected

All packages have stable APIs with no detected changes.


Report generated by Break Check

Last ran on ca23a31.

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Actionable comments posted: 2

🧹 Nitpick comments (3)
packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts (1)

92-112: 📐 Maintainability & Code Quality | 🔵 Trivial | ⚡ Quick win

Add an explicit Promise<Email> return type to this public method.

This is exported API surface, so leaving the return type inferred makes the contract easier to widen accidentally. Based on learnings, exported/public TypeScript APIs in this repo should keep explicit return type annotations. As per coding guidelines, "Always define explicit return types for functions, especially public APIs."

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts` around lines 92 - 112, The
public EmailApi.create method currently relies on inferred return typing, which
can make the exported API contract easier to widen unintentionally. Update the
create method in EmailApi to explicitly declare Promise<Email> as its return
type, keeping the existing this.request<Email>(...) behavior unchanged and
ensuring the public API surface remains clearly typed.

Sources: Coding guidelines, Learnings

packages/backend/src/api/factory.ts (1)

47-80: 📐 Maintainability & Code Quality | 🔵 Trivial | 🏗️ Heavy lift

Give createBackendApiClient a named return type.

This exported factory is the main public surface for @clerk/backend, and adding endpoints by inference makes accidental API-shape changes easy to miss. Please extract a named client interface/type and annotate the factory with it explicitly. Based on learnings, exported/public TypeScript APIs in this repo should keep explicit return type annotations. As per coding guidelines, "Always define explicit return types for functions, especially public APIs."

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/factory.ts` around lines 47 - 80,
`createBackendApiClient` currently relies on inferred return shape, which can
hide accidental public API changes; define a named client interface/type for the
object it returns and annotate the factory explicitly. Use the existing
`createBackendApiClient` function and the API properties it constructs (for
example `actorTokens`, `agentTasks`, `apiKeys`, `billing`, `clients`, `emails`)
to build the type, then update the exported function signature to return that
type directly.

Sources: Coding guidelines, Learnings

packages/backend/src/api/resources/Email.ts (1)

3-17: 📐 Maintainability & Code Quality | 🔵 Trivial | ⚡ Quick win

Document the new userId field before it becomes part of the public Email model.

Email.userId is new public/reference-facing surface, but there’s no JSDoc here explaining when it is populated or how it relates to toEmailAddress. Add a short field-level doc comment, and this likely needs Docs-team awareness since generated reference docs come from JSDoc in packages/**. As per path instructions, "Treat JSDoc on public/reference-facing APIs as customer-facing documentation, not ordinary internal comments." As per coding guidelines, "All public APIs must be documented with JSDoc."

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/resources/Email.ts` around lines 3 - 17, The Email
public model now exposes a new userId field without the required customer-facing
JSDoc. Add a short field-level doc comment in the Email class constructor for
userId, explaining when it is populated and how it relates to toEmailAddress, so
generated reference docs stay accurate. Make sure the documentation is placed
directly on the Email constructor parameter alongside the other fields and treat
this as public API documentation.

Sources: Coding guidelines, Path instructions

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@packages/backend/src/api/__tests__/EmailApi.test.ts`:
- Around line 30-95: Add a new unit test for EmailApi.emails.create that
exercises text-only content serialization. The current EmailApi.test cases only
cover the html path, so extend the existing create tests in EmailApi.test to
call apiClient.emails.create with text instead of html and assert the request
body sent by the email API uses the expected text field (alongside the existing
to/from/replyTo shape). Make sure the new test also validates the response
mapping still works for this content mode.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts`:
- Around line 58-90: Update CreateEmailParams in EmailApi so the html/text
requirement is enforced by the type system instead of just docs: make the shape
a union that requires at least one of html or text while still allowing both,
and keep the existing runtime validation in the create/send path for JS callers.
Use the CreateEmailParams and any emails.create-related types or helpers in
EmailApi to locate the change, and ensure the validation error clearly tells
developers that one of html or text must be provided.

---

Nitpick comments:
In `@packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts`:
- Around line 92-112: The public EmailApi.create method currently relies on
inferred return typing, which can make the exported API contract easier to widen
unintentionally. Update the create method in EmailApi to explicitly declare
Promise<Email> as its return type, keeping the existing this.request<Email>(...)
behavior unchanged and ensuring the public API surface remains clearly typed.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/factory.ts`:
- Around line 47-80: `createBackendApiClient` currently relies on inferred
return shape, which can hide accidental public API changes; define a named
client interface/type for the object it returns and annotate the factory
explicitly. Use the existing `createBackendApiClient` function and the API
properties it constructs (for example `actorTokens`, `agentTasks`, `apiKeys`,
`billing`, `clients`, `emails`) to build the type, then update the exported
function signature to return that type directly.

In `@packages/backend/src/api/resources/Email.ts`:
- Around line 3-17: The Email public model now exposes a new userId field
without the required customer-facing JSDoc. Add a short field-level doc comment
in the Email class constructor for userId, explaining when it is populated and
how it relates to toEmailAddress, so generated reference docs stay accurate.
Make sure the documentation is placed directly on the Email constructor
parameter alongside the other fields and treat this as public API documentation.
🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

  • Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
  • Create a new PR with the fixes

ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Repository YAML (base), Repository UI (inherited)

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: fe756ae6-779b-471d-8761-085c4e14baea

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 4de72af and 76aaebf.

📒 Files selected for processing (6)
  • .changeset/clerk-email-send.md
  • packages/backend/src/api/__tests__/EmailApi.test.ts
  • packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts
  • packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/index.ts
  • packages/backend/src/api/factory.ts
  • packages/backend/src/api/resources/Email.ts

Comment thread packages/backend/src/api/__tests__/EmailApi.test.ts
Comment thread packages/backend/src/api/endpoints/EmailApi.ts Outdated

@wobsoriano wobsoriano left a comment

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Looks good! Left some nits

Comment thread .changeset/email-cr-fixes.md
Comment thread .changeset/clerk-email-send.md Outdated
Co-authored-by: Robert Soriano <sorianorobertc@gmail.com>
@cbnsndwch

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Thank you!

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