The lifting/interfacing with whatsapp is handled by https://github.com/tulir/whatsmeow
Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
41–50 of 168 posts
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
And what ever happened to tools like jabber ? Or any other open source alternatives
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#43I 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 us…
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.
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#44Matrix
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#45This 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?
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.
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#46Beware 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.
Right now I see many bots on WhatsApp.
You can use the official API to create and run bots - though the API itself is pretty bad
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#47What is the best way to get a throwaway phone number to try this? Is it possible to get one online?
I've used textverified in the past, maybe you could check it out (small cost per verification)
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#48If 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.
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.
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#49(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
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.
...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.
Re: Wacli – WhatsApp CLI
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And what ever happened to tools like jabber ? Or any other open source alternatives
Jabber/XMPP was designed around persistent TCP connections. Push notification support came too late.