hey search --from should match hey compose --from (send-as aliases)

[heredia21]

Context

hey compose --from accepts a configured sender from hey account senders (custom domain / send-as). hey search --from with that same address typically returns zero threads, even though those messages exist and can be found with hey search --to <recipient>.

Search appears to index the HEY account identity as creator / from, not the envelope From used at send time. So the flag that is documented as “Sender name or email address” does not mean the same thing as compose --from.

#454 is about connecting new SMTP send-as addresses. This is about finding mail already sent with a configured sender.

No account-specific details below.

Ask

1. Treat hey search --from as matching envelope From (the send-as address), the account identity, or both — and document which.
2. If both stay distinct, add a flag (--sender / --from-alias) that matches hey account senders the same way compose does.
3. When --from is a configured sender and the index only has the account identity, prefer a clear empty-result hint over a silent zero.

Why it matters

Any workflow that sends as a public / custom-domain address cannot later query “mail I sent as that address” without knowing every recipient. Combined with a sent listing and a compose receipt, --from would be enough to pull one campaign’s outbound in one command.

[heredia21]

Same outbound-scripting set: compose receipt #468, sent listing #469.

[robzolkos]

Thanks for reporting this. I traced both paths through hey-cli, hey-sdk, and Haystack.

compose --from is working as intended: the CLI resolves the configured sender and the SDK sends its acting_sender_id.

search --from passes the value correctly as refine[from]. Haystack resolves that to contact IDs and filters the search index by the entry's creator_id. Indexed entries contain creator_id, but not the send-as identity. For outbound mail sent through an alternate configured sender, the creator remains the account identity, so searching by the send-as address returns no result.

This is a Haystack indexing/query gap rather than a CLI or SDK bug. The server should make from match both creator and send-as identity, or expose an alias-aware filter, then reindex existing messages.

[heredia21]

Thanks for walking both paths. Agreed this is not a CLI or SDK bug: compose --from resolving acting_sender_id is correct, and search --from faithfully passing refine[from] is also correct. The miss is Haystack resolving that refine to creator_id only.

Matching from against both creator and send-as identity (or an alias-aware filter), then reindexing existing messages, is the behavior we were after. Until that lands, a sent listing (#469) is the practical workaround — as long as those rows can be filtered or at least display the send-as address.

Happy to retest --from against a send-as address once the index change is out.