No, I'm not afraid of pushback at all. I'm actually really glad I used IMAP.

Building on top of it let me solve a few major protocol headaches directly in the client:

The app filters out signature junk (like tiny social media and logo icons), pulls down just the raw attachments instead of downloading entire 20-year-old message threads, and handles thousands of images while gracefully managing Google's rate limits (to avoid connection drops).