Yet another Hacker News

14 points fabian_shipamax 1 hour ago 27 comments

Hi,

I built Chat-Man because I wanted a cheap way to give my agents access to WhatsApp without integrating a WhatsApp library separately in every project.

You get WhatsApp MCP server, so you can connect WhatsApp to an agent and programmatically read, search, extract and send messages - but also have a web UI for non-techies.

You can also receive webhooks for incoming messages for starred conversations.

What you can do with the MCP? -Read WhatsApp messages and turn them into CRM records -Summarise conversations or groups -Extract structured information from messages -Find messages, participants or other WhatsApp data -Send messages -Manage group memberships

Of course.. you always need to follow data protection regulation.

The web UI: -Edit group details -See who joined or left -See who is most active -Export group members -Match members against a CSV (e.g. from a CRM) -Bulk message members -Bulk kick members -Create invite links For individual contacts, you can send messages directly from the UI.

Why I built it for myself? I needed WhatsApp access for several projects (hermo.ai, florahaus.co.uk, …) and didn't want to pay for a WhatsApp integration for each project.

Link: https://chat-man.net

I’d love to get some feedback, especially from people building agents that need access to WhatsApp. Fabian

kreidema 47 minutes ago | parent

Do I understand correctly that your service works as a registered device into my whatsapp account with full "admin" like access? This seems a bit harsh for the sensitive data that peoples wahatsapp contain? Or am I missing a usecase here where that is unproblematic? Business accounts maybe?

asteroidburger 45 minutes ago | parent

Businesses should be using WhatsApp business accounts. They cost money per message sent and don’t support groups, but it’s the officially sanctioned way to do it.

fabian_shipamax 43 minutes ago | parent

Businesses can use the official API which is costly and takes time to set up. Correct.

fabian_shipamax 42 minutes ago | parent

Not quite sure what you mean with admin access. There no such concept. But you can basically do anything a user can do - but via MCP.

blueplanet200 13 minutes ago | parent

Exactly. OP meant that it has permission to do anything, hence "admin".

LawrenceKerr 47 minutes ago | parent

Does this require a Meta / WhatsApp business account?

If not, is this a solution using WhatsApp Web in the backend (like Baileys does)? If this is the case, how does your solution avoid getting blocked or banned? I used Baileys once in an MVP with only 7 users, and my agent got blocked really quickly after just a few days of using it. So I guess the official path is the only way to go?

fabian_shipamax 45 minutes ago | parent

No it doesn’t.

fabian_shipamax 43 minutes ago | parent

If you use it for personal and not excessively you won’t get banned is my experience. You if you start messaging new contacts on a large scale you probably will.

thomasjeff1 14 minutes ago | parent

That is normal when you lose your contacts and do an external backup. WhatsApp thinks I am texting large number of strangers whereas I already know those contacts. Happened to me. Lost access to WhatsApp.

lordgrenville 42 minutes ago | parent

Am I correct in guessing that this is a ToS violation and could lead to getting blocked?

fabian_shipamax 38 minutes ago | parent

You are right that this is a consideration and risk. But it can make your life much easier. The reality is that these tool are available now. This is in fact not the first one like this. It can make the work of small businesses or clubs more more efficient.

dpoloncsak 22 minutes ago | parent

...with the risk of getting banned, you can't reasonably use this for anything 'important'.

In order to make my life easier, it probably needs to be doing important stuff.

You can't hide behind 'other apps are doing it too', if my 'important business account' or whatever gets banned from using your tool, I'd be upset at you.

How do you guarantee your uptime SLA if my account may get banned any second?

gcgbarbosa 15 minutes ago | parent

This is ToS violation for sure. OP will soon receive a letter from Zuck's lawyers

TZubiri 36 minutes ago | parent

Breaks ToS

Will be used to spam

liotier 27 minutes ago | parent

Any opening of proprietary chat to useful tools will be used for spam too. It is a curse.

lbrito 29 minutes ago | parent

Are people really this nonchalant about giving away their private whatsapp conversations to the likes of Anthropic and Openai?

dpoloncsak 27 minutes ago | parent

This can be used locally, no?

testycool 25 minutes ago | parent

And you typically use them for business, not on private accounts.

lbrito 10 minutes ago | parent

Most of the use cases in the page are personal, like Family Group, Sports Group and so on.

"Pick members and send them a personal direct message".

fabian_shipamax 23 minutes ago | parent

It’s a cloud product

dpoloncsak 13 minutes ago | parent

Sorry, I may has misphrased what I meant. Can I use this with a local model? Or is it locked to Claude

robertclaus 17 minutes ago | parent

I'm much more concerned about the odds that this tool is vibe coded and will leak the conversations everywhere other than the LLM agent I've already vetted.

addag 12 minutes ago | parent

Oh gosh, if only it was just the whatsapp chats...

monononon34 15 minutes ago | parent

it looks like a dangerous. i can't trust the LLM

monononon34 13 minutes ago | parent

does it have any security system?

cute_boi 14 minutes ago | parent

how is this different than https://github.com/WhiskeySockets/Baileys which seems more reliable?

yablak 10 minutes ago | parent

Looked into this a while back. WhatsApp MCP servers attach as a second device to WhatsApp and pull down your message history.

Most of the ones I've seen on github do not store the messages encrypted locally.

When evaluating these tools, check to see what they store unencrypted on disk. A quick search shows that only one seems to check the boxes:

https://github.com/adelaidasofia/whatsapp-mcp

However I haven't tested it. And it does phone home, you may want to disable that before running it.