// EXHIBIT A
Zero-config capture
SquatchMail attaches to Swoosh's telemetry at boot and observes every send your app already makes. No adapter swap. No proxy. It was watching the whole time.
// Field station 001 — Amazon SES observability for Phoenix
YOUR EMAILS ARE
OUT THERE.
SQUATCHMAIL FINDS THEM.
The self-hosted Amazon SES dashboard for Elixir, shipped as a Hex package. Add the dep, run one migration, mount one route — and every email your Phoenix app sends leaves a trackable footprint in your own Postgres.Big footprint. Tiny bill.
// Live from the forest floor
WITNESS A SIGHTING
Every send is a Sighting. Every SES event is a Footprint. This is the Trail Log — the part of the dashboard you'll leave open in a tab and glance at like a trail camera.
TRAIL LOG
Tracking live
SightingStatus
- clicked12s
mulder@fbi.example
I want to believe (your receipt)
- opened48s
scully@fbi.example
Evidence attached: invoice #1967
- delivered1m
ranger@pnw.example
Trail conditions: muddy, mysterious
- bounced3m
bear@forest.example
You are NOT the cryptid we ordered
- opened4m
patterson@gimlin.example
Frame 352: your weekly digest
Following tracks…simulated — your real mail goes here
1
migration to run
0
extra services to babysit
0
blurry photos — raw payloads kept
100%
of the evidence in YOUR postgres
// What the expedition has confirmed
FIELD EVIDENCE
Most researchers spend decades without a single confirmed sighting. You'll have one before your coffee cools.
// EXHIBIT B
SES event ingestion
Deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, delays — every SNS notification becomes a Footprint on a per-email timeline. Signatures hand-verified. No blurry evidence.
// EXHIBIT C
One-click Base Camp
"Connect SES" provisions the configuration set, SNS topic, HTTPS subscription, and event destination for you. The afternoon you'd lose in the AWS console, done from a button.
// EXHIBIT D
The Do-Not-Disturb Registry
Hard bounces and complaints are suppressed permanently; soft bounces expire. Some addresses have asked to be left alone. The Squatch respects boundaries.
// EXHIBIT E
A circuit breaker with claws
The Guard auto-pauses sending at a 0.1% complaint rate — SES's own account-suspension threshold — before AWS pauses it for you, less politely.
// EXHIBIT F
Status that never lies
A late delivery notification can't un-click an email. Statuses only ever upgrade; bounces and complaints always win outright. The trail record is sacred.
// EXHIBIT G
It cleans up after itself
The Pruner sweeps old emails and footprints past your retention window on a timer. The forest doesn't accumulate footprints forever. Leave no trace.
// EXHIBIT H
Your database, your rules
Everything lives in its own squatch_mail Postgres schema inside your existing database, versioned and migrated the Oban / ErrorTracker way. No queue. No Redis. No cryptid infrastructure.
// How a sighting gets tracked
TRACKING METHODOLOGY
Outbound — a send happens
Your Swoosh mailer delivers — exactly as it does today. No adapter swap, no proxy, no code changes to your send path.
Telemetry hears the branch snap — SquatchMail captures the send from inside your BEAM node, asynchronously. It never blocks a delivery.
The Sighting is logged — recipients, subject, attachments, all filed in the squatch_mail schema of your own database.
Inbound — SES reports back
SES → SNS → your webhook — delivery, open, click, bounce, complaint, delay. Signed notifications, straight to your app.
The evidence is authenticated — SigV1/SigV2 signatures hand-verified against :public_key. Forged footprints don't make it past the perimeter.
Footprints hit the timeline — statuses upgrade, suppressions update themselves, and the Trail Log moves. No queue, no polling, no séance.
// Actual footage — not an artist's rendering
THE FIRST CRYPTID PHOTO IN PERFECT FOCUS
Sixty years of blurry evidence, and then this: the Trail Log, captured in the wild, every pixel sharp. Sightings on the left, delivery stats up top, the whole forest accounted for.
Exhibit 001 — unretouched
// Know your local wildlife
RAW SES LEAVES YOU ALONE IN THE WOODS
Amazon SES hands you a message ID and wishes you luck. Hosted wrappers keep your evidence on their servers. There is a third path through the trees.
| Capability | Raw SES | Hosted wrapper | SquatchMail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send observability | A message ID and silence | Yes, on their servers | Yes, in your Postgres — zero code changes |
| Bounce & complaint handling | Wire up SNS yourself | Built in | Built in, signatures hand-verified |
| Suppression list | Build and enforce it yourself | Built in | Built in, bounce-type-aware expiry + optional send blocking |
| Where your data lives | Nowhere — SES keeps no timeline | Their database, their retention | Your database, your schema, your rules |
| Setup | The AWS console, by hand, in the rain | API key + their SDK | mix igniter.install squatch_mail |
| Extra infrastructure | None (but also none of the above) | A vendor dependency | None. It's a library, not a lodge fee. |
// Speak fluent cryptid
LEARN THE LINGO
- Sighting
- An email your app sent. It's out there now.
- Footprint
- An SES event — delivered, opened, clicked, bounced. Evidence it happened.
- Trail Log
- The live activity feed. Where you watch the woods.
- Base Camp
- SES connection & settings. Where the expedition starts.
- Do-Not-Disturb
- The suppression list. Boundaries, respected.
- Field Guide
- The documentation. You're soaking in it.
The code underneath is boring on purpose — Email,EmailEvent,Suppression. The bigfoot is a costume the UI wears, not a religion the codebase practices.
// Two ways into the woods
SET UP BASE CAMP
Elixir 1.15+, Ecto 3.13+, Phoenix LiveView 1.0+, PostgreSQL. If your Phoenix app already talks to SES, SquatchMail is mostly just…there — the way a footprint is there whether or not you were looking for it.
# one command. the installer does the rest:
# dep, config, migration, route, raw-body reader.
mix igniter.install squatch_mail
# then run the migration and go look at your woods
mix ecto.migrate
mix phx.server # → http://localhost:4000/squatch
Full trail map — including the one endpoint tweak the installer can't always do for you — in the installation guide.
// The hide-and-seek world champion, on your side for once
STOP TAKING AWS'S WORD FOR IT.
START COLLECTING EVIDENCE.
Open source, MIT licensed, and self-hosted — because the best proof is the kind that lives in your own database.