(Caveat I’m the founder of https://wassist.app - The WhatsApp Agent Platform)

Please be very careful using this tool to automate your WhatsApp - if you send too many messages, too quickly, you are going to get banned.

This is NOT an officially supported api by WhatsApp and the risk of ban is relatively high

• batuhanicoz

  today at 8:09 AM

  The way I would put it as someone who works at Beeper is: only use messaging automations for personal use, and don't use it to spam anyone or do anything you wouldn't do yourself within the app.

  As long as you don't abuse and keep your usage within the parameters of any human, you'll be fine.

  • theoryaway

    today at 4:50 PM

    Someone who previously helped a project Barista/instagrabber, you should be wary of it.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20240527132615/https://austinhua...

    • fg137

      today at 5:26 PM

      That's quite... something.

      I (almost) don't use any Meta products, but this just convinces me that I should stay away from it as far as possible.

  • sigmoid10

    today at 8:38 AM

    ...until Meta decides they want to offer this kind of thing themselves and ban everyone else. Building your SaaS on top of someone else's SaaS is always a gamble, especially if said product is directly sold to users already and not a pure b2b intermediate.

    • joshwarwick15

      today at 8:44 AM

      They're already outright banning many OpenClaw usecases via their official API: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/whatssapp-changes-its-term...

    • trashb

      today at 12:41 PM

      Since recently Meta offers this as per European Union mandate (Digital Markets Act, DMA). For both Whatsapp and Facebook messaging. [0]

      Now there are a lot of implementation requirements, basically forcing you to have some kind of messaging provider. Therefore difficult to apply for an open source solution. However there is such an interface.

      [0] https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...

    • NoahZuniga

      today at 8:42 AM

      Meta already has a whatsapp api product

      • TeMPOraL

        today at 9:05 AM

        For spammers.

        They don't have one for regular people who want to do regular end-user computation.

        • kamma4434

          today at 7:05 PM

          I personally find the almost absence of spam on WhatsApp a big success story for it. Think about how much Spam still hits your email inbox (and nobody knows how much is filtered away before it does).

          I totally understand why they try and make it hard for integration to happen. When compared to classic SMS, the fact that you need to start a conversation with a preapproved template means that they have a way to control casual interactions.

        • pancsta

          today at 9:59 AM

          Companies in spain use it for legitimate reasons, so its more a lack of usage which makes spam the only usage?

          • TeMPOraL

            today at 10:10 AM

            I consider marketing use to be spam, and this is what the API is primarily meant for.

            I understand that WhatsApp is kinda special in that it effectively replaced SMS in some parts of the world, but IMO this needs to be looked at through the lens of other Meta effort. The same is the case with Facebook/Messenger, and has been since before WhatsApp has been a (Meta) thing - they offer multiple different official ways to support spamming users and tricking them to buy stuff, but may the Lord have mercy on you should you want to create an auto-responder or "save to calendar" script and hook it up to your personal account.

            • filcuk

              today at 10:27 AM

              Who mentioned marketing? It's used for package tracking, order updates, bookings and so on where I live.

              • TeMPOraL

                today at 1:13 PM

                Not where I live, presumably not in the US, and it doesn't look like the main use case emphasized in the developer/integration documentation.

        • c0balt

          today at 12:27 PM

          That seems a but pessimistic. A few companies use it for customer service, like ime Adidas Germany [0] (they handled an exchange for me once on there). It is effectively just another customer support line like a chat portal on a website.

          [0]: https://www.adidas.de/en/help/contact-us

  • nurettin

    today at 3:39 PM

    Personal use is all fun and games until your little beeper goes into a loop.

  • boxingdog

    today at 4:08 PM

    [dead]

• swyx

  today at 3:47 PM

  just so we know the consequences - is ban permanent? is there an appeals processes?

  • pedroslopez

    today at 6:10 PM

    When banned it'll give you means to reach out to support, you can claim ignorance and get unbanned. I've gone through this, having done some whatsapp automation myself, YMMV though.

    • swyx

      today at 6:38 PM

      very helpful, thanks. good on WA for providing actually working support. people will fuck up when testing legitimate stuff, it happens.

I just use telegram.

Just yesterday I setup a bot which is easy via botfather

And also, setup an app (claude built it but I had to fiddle with it, it works like pagerduty) but uses cloudflate worker to push downtime/errors (via fcm) in production (from graphana) via webhooks to "full screen, by pass dnd, alerts, with loud music, this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0IQBWWabuU )

I named the app "Siren".

It's not straightforward to have durable hard to miss alerts about your production enviornment but good thing is this doesn't cost a cent.

Telegram group alerts are from my teammates (small team 3 members) via bot.

And Siren is for only me as I am responsible for the backend with 10 microservices, centralized logging via graphana, alloy, loki, and for metrics Prometheus.

It's all working reasonably well for me, this makes your life so much better as you fix the issues before they turn into nightmare.

• jeanlucas

  today at 8:25 AM

  I personally don't use whatsapp because I like it, but because all my contacts in my country are over there. It is officially more used than SMS here. It is not optional in my case :/

  • gsich

    today at 9:27 AM

    SMS is unsafe anyway.

    • baq

      today at 9:58 AM

      zuck can read your whatsapp messages, at this point I think I'd rather criminals and the government read them instead

      • hikarudo

        today at 1:39 PM

        WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. No one at Meta can read your messages.

        • 1vuio0pswjnm7

          today at 6:41 PM

          Saw this exact claim on a billboard not too long ago

          It's a strangely worded statement. What about data collection, metadata, other third parties

          Maybe it's related to the fact that plaintiffs lawyers are now trying to verify what's going on inside Meta with WhatsApp through litigation discovery:

          https://ia801607.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cand.4...

          Meta's motion to dismiss seemed a little weak. Time will tell

          https://ia801607.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.cand.4...

          Hearing will likely be sometime this summer

        • righthand

          today at 4:02 PM

          If I can log into whatsapp on a new device and old messages aren’t encrypted then they have a copy of your key and it is not true e2e encryption.

          • lukebennett

            today at 4:47 PM

            You can't unless you've chosen to back up your WhatsApp messages to iCloud/Google in which case it's Apple/Google responsible for preserving the messages and subject to their encryption standards, nothing to do with Meta.

          • Mordisquitos

            today at 4:14 PM

            Try logging in on a new device and putting your main device into aeroplane mode as soon as the login succeeds. Loading of old messages on the new device will stop.

        • cute_boi

          today at 1:53 PM

          How are we sure that it is really end-to-end encrypted?

          • lossyalgo

            today at 2:26 PM

            Moxie Marlinspike (founder of Signal) [0]implemented the same E2EE algorithm as Signal (Signal Protocol) into WhatsApp, but that was 10 years ago, so who knows if things have changed since then.

            [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike

          • dTal

            today at 6:55 PM

            Practically speaking, it isn't secure; no closed app can be. It receives regular compulsory updates (old versions refuse to work) and there's nothing at all stopping Zuck from sneaking in backdoors targeted at you personally.

      • pwillia7

        today at 1:52 PM

        yeah who wants marginally regulated oligarchs -- Give me fully unregulated criminals!

      • mett36

        today at 3:12 PM

        +1

    • TeMPOraL

      today at 10:17 AM

      Nobody gives a damn. What matters is that it works even on a potato.

      SMS security only became a problem due to 2FA, which is just one of many use cases, and the failure isn't even technical here but organizational. I agree it should've prompted more pressure to secure the system against SIM-swapping; alas this is too close to the Real World, so the tech industry instead responded with alternative that side-steps the problem by offering zero customer support. No humans to talk to = no humans to social engineer = secure. So much win.

      (I'd also say the 2FA proliferation is itself a problem, but that's an unpopular opinion and for a separate discussion.)

      • lxgr

        today at 11:00 AM

        > Nobody gives a damn. What matters is that it works even on a potato.

        It doesn't work on my computer, nor does it work on my phone when I'm traveling (different SIM), so I give a damn. WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal etc. do both. I really wish there was an open, federated standard (and no, RCS is neither), but until then, I'll use what actually works for me.

        SMS just sucks, and I hate that it's become so ubiquitous an authentication method when it's not even secure.

        • bluebarbet

          today at 11:46 AM

          You can rent a virtual mobile number in your home country and consult SMSs on the web or even redirect them to email. I have done this for years, using Twilio for 2€ a month. Can't say the UX is great but it certainly fixes the whole problem.

          I've never understood why so many people still chain their identities to physical SIM or even eSIMs. It's so fragile.

          • simonra

            today at 5:14 PM

            > I've never understood why so many people still chain their identities to physical SIM or even eSIMs. It's so fragile.

            Living in a place where getting a replacement sim is gated behind obtaining an id from the police tied to your national id number, I wish there were other identity systems which were as robust. Much easier to get back to normal operations when the id device becomes damaged or lost with a physical sim you can shove into a cheap replacement device, than relying on backup services you need one of your digital id devices to access in the first place, especially if they're all lost at the same time in a house fire or something. The police will presumably get all my photo backups and savings if they ask nicely anyways, so the big threat to the single point of failure doesn't have a great marginal impact, while I dread the possibility of having to recover the accounts I can't get back through the local legal system given the poor 2fa recovery ecosystem.

            • bluebarbet

              today at 6:56 PM

              >Much easier to get back to normal operations when the id device becomes damaged or lost with a physical sim you can shove into a cheap replacement device

              If the device can get damaged or lost, then the SIM can too. To buy a physical SIM or rent a virtual number online, in most jurisdictions you need to provide ID docs these days, so nothing is changed there.

          • lxgr

            today at 12:04 PM

            Yeah, that's a good workaround. Google Voice can work too.

            Unfortunately, more and more services are declining to send to VoIP numbers because of seCurItY, so it's a game of cat and mouse.

            Fortunately SMS is so expensive in parts of Europe and it's not allowable anymore to use SMS by itself for online payment authentication, and both issues combined have slowly been pushing companies to explore alternatives.

            There unfortunately seems to be no such pressure in the US. Passkeys could solve the issue, but probably increase support request volumes enough for most companies to not bother unless forced.

            • Marsymars

              today at 4:03 PM

              If you port a landline number to a VoIP service, services can't really tell that you're using VoIP, as far as I can tell.

              • lxgr

                today at 7:31 PM

                In the US, I belive there are three number categories in the NANP porting database (wireline, cellular, and VoIP), and SMS senders can definitely tell, even though it might take a while (presumably there's a lot of caching going on).

                If you're lucky, the service you care about only validates at number registration time, not at text sending time, and you can get away with it indefinitely, I suppose.

              • wasabi991011

                today at 5:08 PM

                I thought that too but many carriers around me don't allow porting any VoIP-using number back to cellular. (Not sure if you were making a distinction between landline and cellular)

                Unfortunately that means that my cell number which I wanted to temporarily park into VoIP while abroad is now permanently VoIP.

• neya

  today at 8:24 AM

  Second this. Their API is such a breeze and it is so much more automation friendly than any other messenger platform. It has a good adoption % too, otherwise Signal is the real winner if we account for privacy.

  • tcfhgj

    today at 10:32 AM

    Even more automation friendly than Matrix?

    • morphology

      today at 7:48 PM

      It's a bit less automation-friendly because the UX is not great when the bot doesn't have its own phone number (which costs money). I think it has better privacy, though. Matrix server operators can read message metadata.

    • neya

      today at 4:24 PM

      Unfortunately, I haven't used Matrix personally enough to comment, sorry. But, I've heard only good things about it so far.

• BeetleB

  today at 4:50 PM

  I'll second the "Telegram is great for bots". It's the reason OpenClaw users use it.

  I stopped using OpenClaw a while ago, but I did vibe code the very basic automations I had used OpenClaw for. Getting it to work with Telegram was trivial.

  I don't use Telegram for chatting. In fact, I try not to use any IM tools with humans. ;-)

• taminka

  today at 7:59 AM

  it's really unfortunate that telegram doesn't do e2ee, bc it's hands down the best messenger otherwise :(

  • rafaelmn

    today at 9:37 AM

    From what I understand you can have secure chats e2ee ? I like that I can login from multiple devices and continue the conversation. This was always annoying with whatsapp and signal. Worst case is mildly embarrassing stuff leaks.

    • lxgr

      today at 10:51 AM

      > From what I understand you can have secure chats e2ee ?

      Not with bots, though.

      > I like that I can login from multiple devices and continue the conversation

      This is also not possible with Telegram E2E, while it is with Signal and WhatsApp.

  • tazjin

    today at 8:03 AM

    It does, but only for chats between two specific devices. Multi-device support is one of its best features that you lose with E2E.

    Key distribution is just too hard. I think we won't get a messenger for non-tech people that works well with multi-device and E2E basically ever.

    • taminka

      today at 8:42 AM

      whatsapp, facebook messenger, imessage all support multi-device and it's pretty convenient, in fairness to telegram they launched a bit before double ratched was invented, but still, they've had over a decade to switch to it...

      • stavros

        today at 9:00 AM

        WhatsApp doesn't support multi-device. You can't have it installed on two phones at once.

        • taminka

          today at 9:06 AM

          you can (https://faq.whatsapp.com/1046791737425017/?cms_platform=andr...)

          they even have it on fb messenger and instagram (though they recently removed e2ee completely from instagram lol)

          • stavros

            today at 9:08 AM

            That's still one device. If you turn the primary phone off, the secondary device stops working. WhatsApp just proxies everything through the primary device, it's like WhatsApp Web.

            • wisenull

              today at 10:49 AM

              It used to be like that but not anymore. As siblings suggested you can now use it on up to 4 (I believe) additional devices.

            • lxgr

              today at 10:49 AM

              They used to, but that hasn't been true for a few years now.

              Now it uses the Signal protocol's native multi-device capabilities, specifically in the "key per device" variant (unlike signal itself, which uses "key per account" if I'm not mistaken).

            • canpulseword

              today at 10:16 AM

              This is not true, even if the primary phone is offline you can send messages via secondary device, even whatsapp web

              It’s not proxied via primary, otherwise it wouldn’t work if primary were offline

              • stavros

                today at 10:47 AM

                > It’s not proxied via primary, otherwise it wouldn’t work if primary were offline

                That is correct, it doesn't work.

                • lxgr

                  today at 10:52 AM

                  Please stop spreading misinformation that can trivially be disproved with five minutes of effort.

                  • stavros

                    today at 10:52 AM

                    I just tried it. Did you?

                    • akdev1l

                      today at 11:35 AM

                      > You can now use the same WhatsApp account on multiple devices at the same time, using your primary phone to link up to four devices. You’ll need to log in to WhatsApp on your primary phone every 14 days to keep linked devices connected to your WhatsApp account.

                      ref: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1317564962315842/?cms_platform=ipho...

                      > Use WhatsApp on your computer even when your phone is off.

                      ref: https://faq.whatsapp.com/378279804439436/?helpref=faq_conten...

                    • lxgr

                      today at 10:56 AM

                      Yes, and it works, as it has for the past few years.

                      • stavros

                        today at 10:58 AM

                        So I don't need my primary device any more? I can just shut that phone down forever?

                        • lxgr

                          today at 11:04 AM

                          No, I think you need it to be online once every 30 days or so. That's a much weaker requirement than what you were disputing, though.

            • taminka

              today at 9:30 AM

              oh, i see, is it the same for facebook messenger and instagram, imessage, etc?

              • TeMPOraL

                today at 10:22 AM

                Messenger seems to be properly multi-device, but you pay for this by some PIN code bullshit (maybe they removed that, I haven't seen a popup about this for over a year now?) and having to sync chat history in the background, through a process that is, of course, broken and unreliable.

                I'm actually still jaded about this. Messenger worked fine before they broke it by introducing E2EE; it took years for them to fix the problems this caused (at least the ones that were immediately user-perceptible).

                • taminka

                  today at 11:17 AM

                  yeah messenger still has the pin code thingy, i'm curious why they do it at all that way, can't you just have your keys on fb servers encrypted with another set of keys derived from your password, which is much stronger than a 4-6 digit key?

                • alex1138

                  today at 2:08 PM

                  It's still broken if you're like me and you clear cookies

                  "Let's take people's years-long history between each other and just utterly break it. Why? 'privacy'" but they've never cared about it, they're opportunistic fucks. It's Zuckerberg's company to do with it "as he wishes" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818

              • stavros

                today at 9:34 AM

                I don't know, I don't use those. It is for Signal, I don't think so for Instagram, since I don't think that encrypts end to end.

                • lxgr

                  today at 10:53 AM

                  It's not true for Signal either. Why don't you try it for yourself instead of spreading outdated (at best) information? Signal supports native multi-device capabilities without relaying everything through the "primary" device.

    • ymolodtsov

      today at 8:06 AM

      It's called iMessage. It's possible, Telegram just doesn't care. All their differentiating features (large groups, channels, device sync) is directly enabled by the lack of encryption.

      • taminka

        today at 8:44 AM

        they do have encryption, just not e2ee, and in fairness to them, it doesn't make sense to have e2ee on a channel or a group with 100k ppl in it, also device sync is possible with e2ee, it's just a slower

      • tcfhgj

        today at 10:54 AM

        you can have large groups and device sync WITH e2ee, see Matrix.

    • tcfhgj

      today at 10:33 AM

      Matrix

    • lxgr

      today at 8:08 AM

      What are you talking about? WhatsApp, iMessage, and Signal all have multi-device support and are E2E encrypted, just to name a few very popular options.

• PUSH_AX

  today at 12:09 PM

  > I just use telegram.

  And how do you just get everyone you want to speak to use telegram?

  • pawsocks

    today at 2:46 PM

    Don't worry, it'll auto-spam all of your contacts when you sign up to take care of that.

  • aembleton

    today at 1:42 PM

    Live in a country like Ukraine where everyone uses Telegram

    • today at 4:54 PM

• risyachka

  today at 9:51 AM

  Be careful though - telegram is heavily compromised.

  e.g. their backend just 2 days ago (and since at least start of the year) was replacing referral links to amex (and i bet many other banks etc) with custom referral codes from russian guys (so when I sent my friend my referral link - it showed another referral link in out chat history on both ends). and their security team says its all good.

  so unless you are using it for useless info - better use something else.

  • pawsocks

    today at 2:48 PM

    Was this on a desktop? I'd think it's far more likely malware or a browser extension is hijacking your clipboard

  • pratyahava

    today at 11:15 AM

    please provide a proof. if this is the case, then telegram is not to be trusted. but it needs to be proven. otherwise a lot of people trust their business and personal data to telegram.

  • eamag

    today at 9:59 AM

    Do you have a proof?

  • chaoz_

    today at 10:00 AM

    What even is this claim? Telegram is compromised? Some telegram bot/group got compromised?

    Is there any proof of the global telegram issue related to amex links? Sounds like BS

  • el_io

    today at 12:07 PM

    Are you using any custom telegram client?

  • johnpork343

    today at 6:34 PM

    i say cap

Beware that if this does not use a real web browser then it's likely to get your whatsapp account suspended. Don't use it with any account you care about, you will lose all your data.

Hell, I got my whatsapp account suspended (appealed and reversed) just for using the official web client too soon after creating a new account.

• worldsavior

  today at 8:09 AM

  Right now I see many bots on WhatsApp.

  • joshwarwick15

    today at 8:33 AM

    You can use the official API to create and run bots - though the API itself is pretty bad

  • iddan

    today at 2:56 PM

    They use a real browser

• adaptit

  today at 8:48 AM

  [dead]

I wish it mentioned how safe this is. Some years ago I got banned for just logging in with a third-party client, without sending any messages. Given how critical WhatsApp is for some people, and how permanent the bans are, that's a big risk.

• watermelon0

  today at 7:52 AM

  You should use a separate WhatsApp account for bot purposes.

  Recently, I used a separate WhatsApp account to interact with a group chat that I have with my friends. After about a week, they disabled the account, with no way to re-enable it.

  • BoppreH

    today at 8:08 AM

    In my case I did, but it's still wasted time and money. And when breaking TOS there's always a chance of getting related accounts also banned, though I don't know if that has already happened with WhatsApp or not.

  • miroljub

    today at 8:03 AM

    Since WhatsApp accounts are bound to phone numbers, getting a new phone number is a significant hurdle in many legislations.

    An easier solution is to just not use WhatsApp at all and look for the alternatives for bot purposes. Telegram explicitly encourages bot usage with no risk of bans.

    • uxhacker

      today at 8:27 AM

      And what ever happened to tools like jabber ? Or any other open source alternatives

      • jannes

        today at 8:39 AM

        Jabber/XMPP was designed around persistent TCP connections. Push notification support came too late.

    • ButlerianJihad

      today at 8:45 AM

      > in many legislations

      Do you mean “jurisdictions”?

      • miroljub

        today at 9:04 AM

        I said "legislations" because the word describes the existence of laws, while "jurisdictions" describes the law enforcement.

        There are still some European non-EU countries where you can get an anonymous phone number because laws are not fully enforced.

        • grey-area

          today at 10:14 AM

          This is incorrect usage in English I'm afraid, and jurisdictions covers areas with different laws, 'legislations' is not used in this context.

        • ButlerianJihad

          today at 9:07 AM

          Well, your usage is nonsensical in legal terms. Also, that is not the definition of “jurisdiction”.

          Nobody who knows law would use “legislation” in that sense, nor would they recognize it in that context, Humpty Dumpty.

There's a whole cottage industry around WhatsApp that exists to provide tools and services to commodity brokers and traders, primarily for compliance and bulk messaging existing customers. Meta has nerfed bulk forwarding on their desktop app, and the industry moved to third party tools to work around this. The reality is, no-one is spamming, everyone is consenting to this, everyone understands the risks, but a lot of markets live on the WhatsApp network, and despite there being compliant chat solutions, the existing network effects keep the status quo. Prior to WhatsApp, the markets operated on Yahoo Messenger, and the only reason there was a move was because Yahoo shut it down in 2016.

If anyone from Meta is reading this - we've spoken to some of your managers and there's zero appetite from your side to address this market because it's too small. I would go out of my way to help you design this for free to solve the market need.

• mediaman

  today at 4:13 PM

  Meta could turn Whatsapp into the next Slack. I know a lot of businesses (especially international ones) that use it for team communication. It's so much better than Teams.

  I guess they think it's a small market, or maybe you can't really monetize enterprise with ads and it's all they know how to do.

  • today at 4:37 PM

Cool.

I spun up a self hosted matrix server a few days ago using codex, docker compose, and ansible. Stupidly easy to do now. I'm running it in Hetzner on a 3.99 euro/month vm. It backs up every few hours to a bucket and I have a few integrity scripts to monitor the backups actually happen. I did that because I was getting a bit frustrated with the flaky integration with Whatsapp and Slack in openclaw. I had it up and running in half an hour with only minimal prompting.

Whatsapp kind of works but you end up chatting with yourself and then open claw posts messages as you. Not ideal. You can't easily create new users (or bot users) in Whatsapp. It probably has some kind of bot api of course but I did not explore that much.

I never quite managed to get Slack working with open claw. I tried for a few hours. I think the Slack team is asleep at the wheel snoozing through this whole AI thing. If somebody there is still paying attention to things like this, maybe make some noise internally. Anyway, they made it stupidly hard to do anything productive via their APIs. The UI for managing permissions is a disgraceful hell of complexity. Add permission. UI freezes for fifteen seconds. Reloads automatically. Unfreezes. Add the next. And whatever you do, there's always one more permission you forgot. *end rant*

Relative to Whatsapp and Slack, Matrix is stupidly easy to integrate with open claw, codex, or whatever. We're retiring Slack now as I see uses for agent driven chat bots everywhere now and I want to get rid of any kind of friction around bot related plumbing. I have no use for platforms that intentionally cripple that or treat as a toll booth.

With Matrix, you just create a bot user manually or via an API. Set a password, get an access token and do whatever. No API limits. No faff with QR codes. No permission hell (Slack). It just works. Well documented API. End to end encryption. Etc. Create as many bot users as you need. Nobody is bean counting API calls, numbers of users, etc. Refreshingly easy.

Other OSS messaging platforms are available of course. I do not have a strong opinion as to which is better yet. But now I want a Matrix cli that can do admin, message sending, and all the rest. Probably already exists. But if it doesn't I might end up generating one. Macli might be a good name.

This is such a sorely needed point of integration. Cool to see Peter still shipping tools. It’s such a pity meta refuses to play ball like Telegram.

Either they’ll double-down and make this even harder -or- hopefully realise that WhatsApp is likely to be a really common control plane for AI systems in the next few years. Let’s hope the Llama energy strikes and it’s the latter.

How does WhatsMeow compare with Baileys?

• batuhanicoz

  today at 8:02 AM

  whatsmeow is built and maintained by Beeper's bridge architect, Tulir Asokan, and is used by many Beeper users every day with no issues. It's at the core of our WhatsApp bridge: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp

  Baileys is also a great library with a big community and one of the primary maintainers of that is also helping us with the bridge/whatsmeow. WhatsApp integration in our old app, Texts, was built with it: https://github.com/textshq/platform-whatsapp

  I would recommend whatsmeow over Baileys just because we are actively involved and incentivized to keep that working perfectly, and have a lot of data points to detect any issues with it at scale.

  • oulipo2

    today at 8:52 AM

    So whatsmeow requires a browser, and Baileys not right? So it's a bit more lightweight in terms of RAM?

    • batuhanicoz

      today at 8:57 AM

      Neither of them require a browser. We run whatsmeow inside iOS and Android apps, with no browser whatsoever.

      • kandros

        today at 10:48 AM

        Interesting use case, mind explaining more?

• 3form

  today at 7:34 AM

  Don't they ban people using custom clients when discovered? I feel like I've read something on that note.

  • recsv-heredoc

    today at 7:38 AM

    They do - but the utility is so high vs the risk (for a new number) that it’s worth doing anyway for many users and even organizations.

    Just yesterday we spoke with a $50-100m ARR org org using baileys for internal messaging!

    • blitzar

      today at 8:06 AM

      > a $50-100m ARR org org using baileys for internal messaging

      Couldnt they just use post-it notes internally and still be a $50-100m ARR org?

      • recsv-heredoc

        today at 8:21 AM

        Yes - the interesting part is the decision that the “risk of losing internal comms to a ban is worth it” - even at that size.

        According to one of the founders there’s no better way for them to reach a lot of low-skill part-time employees reliably.

        It shows the need to bring AI to where people already are and onto the platforms they already use.

• dinakars777

  today at 7:31 AM

  WhatsMeow is stable unlike Baileys which faces challenges with maintainability.

• TZubiri

  today at 8:33 AM

  The thing is that their tight control is precisely what makes whatsapp a spam free environment. You can't have a libre federated protocol AND have it be spam free.

  As soon as you open up the api floodgate, you'll start to see nigerian prince agents on openclaw speed.

OT#1, but I don't endorse the editorial choice to put the name of the "original" author in the submission title.

OT#2: Is it typical to put a package.json in a go project as replacement for a {Make,Just}file?

I'd be curious to know how many numbers were burned/banned during the development of this library

What is the best way to get a throwaway phone number to try this? Is it possible to get one online?

• mawax

  today at 10:58 AM

  You can get a prepaid eSIM online, depending on your country. It's cheap and you don't have a monthly fee

• Chloride8387

  today at 8:35 AM

  I've used textverified in the past, maybe you could check it out (small cost per verification)

• miroljub

  today at 8:05 AM

  In most of the EU dictatorships, there's no legal way to obtain a phone number without registering with your real identity.

  • 8593376393

    today at 9:42 AM

    [dead]

Reading a lot about people getting banned here for not using the official client, but doesn't Whatsapp have to be interoperable now (at least in the EU due to new legislation) ?

At least Whatsapp itself shows ad banners that you can now connect other messaging clients into Whatsapp, so it should be normal that other clients can equally access Whatsapp.

• lxgr

  today at 10:54 AM

  Officially interoperating with them is extremely onerous, to the point where their mechanism borders malicious compliance, as far as I remember.

  In any case, official interoperability is only for third-party messengers communicating with WhatsApp users, not for automation or bots, as I understand, so it's not a replacement for things like this project.

  • trashb

    today at 12:45 PM

    Indeed, more information here: https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...

    It seems Meta is able to set some rules about the interoperability making it very difficult for an FOSS implementation to emerge. Additionally organizations like Signal though technically interested in this interoperability have stated they won't lower their security standards for this.

The offline search with FTS5 is really nice. I have years of WhatsApp history and searching for anything in the app is painfully slow. Being able to just grep through everything locally would be a huge upgrade.

How far back does the backfill actually go? Does it pull your full history from the primary device or is there some limit?

Ya im totally sure its a good idea to use a tool written by the creator of openclaw with a sensitive account that is closely tied to day to day needs.

What could possibly go wrong with that.

The lifting/interfacing with whatsapp is handled by https://github.com/tulir/whatsmeow

I guess this is breaking ToS?

If AI agents can proficiently use whatsapp I would assume that two-thirds of the people chatting with me in my contacts are actually just bots messaging me.

• psychoslave

  today at 8:37 AM

  People are just a device that LLMs use to interact with the physical world now. That's far more safe for them, staying in the sweet datacenter while the meat puppets take all the risk of dirty jobs out there. Why create terminators or even use them as battery à la Matrix when all you need to do to make them work for you is to inject the right prompts in their phone. They will pay to be thus treated.

It strikes me as odd that we've got so many agent harnesses, orchestrators, sandboxes, yet no one made a communicator for AIs yet.

I don't know why in 2026 I'm still surprised CLIs are taking off. But here's the difference today. It's for real world end user platforms like WhatsApp and Claude. That's the difference. Previously it was only Dev and infrastructure focused. Today we're saying you know what, I need programmatic access to this real world thing. It's fascinating because I rarely open my laptop now or try not to.

Who are these people using the cli?

• psychoslave

  today at 8:28 AM

  People that prefer to use CLI I guess.

  Obviously it helps that one can pipe as it might see fit in the flow of an ad hoc filled need, and so leverage on mastered composable tools.

  That will never be for everyone, but it will be for no one only the day it becomes logistically unsustainable to reach some endpoint though a CLI.

• pmxi

  today at 9:33 AM

  These CLIs are for AI agents. If I have a CLI to WhatsApp, then I can direct an agent (such as OpenClaw) to manage my messages for me.

• duskdozer

  today at 9:20 AM

  Devs are often also users. cli is nice because

  - automation - sometimes avoid enshittified, privacy-invading services - fast, responsive, keyboard-friendly, debloated but non-minimized, stabler interface

Matrix

I tried creating a whatsapp "bot" which would just send notifications for my Jellyfin server. It was a bureaucratic nightmare - creating dev accounts, creating some sort of "project", then it was requiring I register it as a business as though the only valid use case for creating an app for WhatsApp is a business, then it required me to verify my identify and upload documents.

I just switched to Signal.

As someone that's written some apps using official WA for Business accounts, I would strongly advise against any 3rd party tools for automating WA.

Whatsapp has some really stringent requirements on any kind of automation. E.g. Not messaging anyone automatically unless they messaged you with 24 hours, in fact, this is explicitly blocked if you use Meta's API. You have to use message templates in this case.

Also, any bots need to be verified with Meta etc.

And the TOS has gotten more strict recently, not less strict. So buyer beware here, Meta is really protective over reverse engineering WA protocol or automating it, so you can easily get yourself blocked or banned here.

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for some reason, I don't like this guy.

• mechazawa

  today at 7:57 AM

  For some reason vibe coders with no development background consider him a god. But all he is is a charlitan at best

  • batuhanicoz

    today at 8:06 AM

    Peter is also the creator of PSPDFKit, and people have considered him an incredible engineer way before transformers were even invented.

• hathym

  today at 7:58 AM

  for context, he is the openclaw creator

  • blitzar

    today at 8:03 AM

    browsing through the details etc, i genuinely thought they were another twitter vibe coding grifter

    • recsv-heredoc

      today at 8:07 AM

      The world’s most successful one!

      • blitzar

        today at 8:08 AM

        Every twitter grifter awards themselves that honorific