It connects to your personal WhatsApp account via the WhatsApp Web multi-device API (using whatsmeow from the Beeper team), and doesn't rely on third-party APIs. All messages are stored locally in SQLite. Nothing is sent to the cloud unless you explicitly allow your LLM to access the data via tools – so you maintain full control and privacy.
The MCP server can:
- Search your messages, contacts, and groups
- Send WhatsApp messages to individuals or groups
Why build this?
99% of your life is stored in WhatsApp, by connecting an LLM to WhatsApp you get all this context. And your AI agent can execute tasks on your behalf by sending messages.
I've been playing around with mcp-go[0] and it seems pretty good.
I guess it's solvable with Tailscale though
The controls they have in place are probably based on behavior, rather than on access.
I think we could find ourselves losing the "thought and effort" in spite of it being more valuable, because many people find it easier. Or that even those who continue on with it, despite it not being easier, are broadly labeled as a bot because their writings failed the vibe check.
I have confidence that there will always be small communities that continue holding this as valuable, but that maintaining it in a community setting will become more strained as the general zeitgeist drifts in the direction of regarding output higher than effort.
I really have zero understanding why people think this is something crazy. It’s not. It’s importing the official MCP packages and wrapping basic API methods with an MCP tool decorator.
You can even ask Claude or ChatGPT to make your MCP tools for you and they will write this same code in 1 minute.
I can’t wait until the community realizes that MCP servers are literally just regular methods with a one line decorator and these posts just get downvoted for being incredibly low effort.
It’s basically the same as upvoting someone saying “hey guys, I wrote a method which connects to the WhatsApp API”, that’s it, really.
I think the excitement is more around seeing how MCP is being embraced, and the impact it can have. Rather than me having to wire up a bunch of tools by hand, I can now point to some configuration files and MCP servers.
I think it's fair for people to be excited, but ultimately, yes, your prediction is correct, and it won't be as exciting after MCP becomes a standard. This is similar to any new technology. e.g. years ago, Go programs and literature were popular on this site, but not so much any more.
That said, MCP might be here to stay for a while as a stopgap for reducing duplication of engineering work.
Not even remotely true for me even if it would encompass all messaging apps I use. I guess I'm just an old introvert, but it makes me wonder how life looks like for those for whom it is true.
Is it because they have a high motivation to use it? The UI / UX of WhatsApp surely isn't great, I'd even say it's quite bad. Where am I wrong? What am I not seeing?
> Where am I wrong? What am I not seeing?
English is my second language, so maybe I'm missing some context here, but every time I hear techies calling non-techies "Normies", it's used in a derogatory / condescending fashion. That's reductive (non-techies are not a homogenous group) and somewhat intellectually lazy.
To give you an example, WA users in the US and, say Portugal or Poland ended up using it for slightly different reasons and in a different technical context. WA used to be the best video chat app for quite some time in the UK, AT or PL (imo), and I know of many people who started using it for that specific reason (esp. important for large migrant communities). FaceTime wasn't that popular because Android market share in the EU was bigger than in the US.
Contacts aren't stored on the phone, messages act as contacts. Phone and video calls also on WhatsApp. Photos are shared via WhatsApp so that's where the gallery is. It even functions as a calendar of sorts – events are organised in WhatsApp groups so there you have directions and dates and who brings what. More and more businesses use WhatsApp to communicate with customers.
Why people like this, I do not know. But this is what I observe. Maybe software in general is too shit to use so people prefer to take a sub-optimal WhatsApp-based life over fighting their phones at every step. And I can't blame them.
The killer application are the group chats. Normies can't make an email group, or remember to reply to all, or even make a Yahoo! Group [dead] or Google Group [dead?].
It's very easy to setup a group in WhatsApp and keep the member list updated.
For bonus points, it's very difficult to Ctr-C the info in WhatsApp, it's easier to press the arrow and forward the message to another WhatsApp group.
Once you have all your groups in WhatsApp, it's easier to use it for everything.
PS: Also, a few eons ago in many countries SMS had a cost, and WhatsApp was free, it was so another good point to use it.
People already had the phone numbers of people they knew so they just had to install the app and could immediately chat with any of their contacts.
Compared to chat apps with usernames where you started with an empty contact list, the barrier to start using it was very low. It was basically a drop-in replacement for SMS. Group chat and free messages were the reason to switch.
Can it be better? Probably. Does it need to be better? Clearly not.
WhatsApp gained dominance when the alternatives were still SMS and BBM! You don't have to resort to ego-boosting put-downs to explain why it is so popular.
As to "how do they even manage to use it", well, the mere notion of a great UI is vastly overhyped in the first place (by designers themselves, most of all). People get used to just about anything, if they are taught to use it. And learning a 5-step sequence to use any app like this — anybody can do that, even a 85 year old (even if they swear they can't).
From "neighborhoodwatch" via "the school information" to "colleagues". Hell, even governments and public transportation have "feel unsafe? message us on whatsapp 06..." In the Netherlands it's truly omnipresent, and without WA you will be left out socially.
I'm reluctant of WA, because I'm steering clear of Meta as much as possible, but I do use it to: keep in touch with at least 26 social groups - friends, family, colleagues, co-workers, business - keep in touch with my date/love, my mother, and father who lives across the world.
granted, there's a big move going towards signal lately - finally. But I'm not sure how big this really is, and how sticky it will prove. Nor if this is just my bubble or truly across the whole country.
That said, you'd be an outlier if you have a mobile phone but no WhatsApp. Everyone has WhatsApp, but fortunately not everyone is using it for everything. Unfortunately, that usually means using an even less secure and trustworthy messenger service.
I do know people working in sales and purchasing and I wouldn't be surprised if they had 25% or more of their professional lives in WhatsApp. Previously they used Skype heavily. So this could be interesting for them.
- Group Chat for the family (Immediate, Extended Mother Side, Extended Father Side)
- Chat with hole in the wall restaurant to order sometinhg to eat after work
- 2FA for local shop
- Customer Support for local bank
- Work Chat (Informally assigned tasks and general info)
- Chat with Taxi
- Delivery Tracking for local courier
- LLM wrapper
- Invoice/Receipt Sending
- Appointments for many services (Like barbers)
I could more or less do anything, from work related task management, to requesting a new credit card from inside whatsapp
Instead, if you have calendar + email + their main messaging apps (e.g. WhatsApp) you cover the majority of it. It's messy and unstructured — but luckily LLMs are great at that
Is there a way to login on WhatsApp Web on a server and then proxy or scrape the messages to send them to my phone?
That's quite a presumption to make.
If you connect a not-selhosted LLM to this, you're effectively uploading chat message with other people to a third-party server. The people you chat with have an expectation of privacy so this would probably be illegal in many jurisdictions.
It could be legal to record and use as evidence in court later, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to share it with some AI company.
Sure you can, but the people can sue you if you paste it into something public. I don't know if you're making some deep philosophical comment but this is something people have been sued and lost for before.
And it also doesn't even matter because WhatsApp claims to be E2E-encrypted.
It's up to you to trust Meta or not, but people who trust them do have an expectation of privacy.
It also misses the mark because you're talking about an eavesdropper intercepting messages and the OP is the receiver sharing the messages with a third party themself.
Name one
You have a "allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht" (general personal rights?) that prevents other people from publishing information that's supposed to be private.
Here's a case where someone published a facebook dm for example:
For some people it is a requirement to have a social life. It is not your choice to use it or not. Network effects are taking care of that. If you think Signal or whatever is a better choice, good on you. But if you don't want to cut ties with some of your friends, prepare to use multiple apps. Including WhatsApp.
Back, when data plans were around 1GB or less some network providers didn't charge you for using whatsapp on specific plans in Europe. There were also whatsapp branded sim cards, but I haven't seem them for a long time though.
Since on-device processing is neither as objectionable nor could be very large
I don't use WhatsApp myself because of who runs it and there are plenty of better options out there, so I certainly agree with the sentiment of steering clear, but this claim does seem pretty far out there
Citation needed.
It's a local LLM with access to an extraordinary amount of personal data. In the EU at least that personal data is supposed to be handled with care. I don't see people freaking out, but simple pointing out the leap of handing it over to ANOTHER company.
That doesn't make the metadata private. Meta can use that as they want. But not the contents, nor the images, not even in group chats (as opposed to Telegram, where group-chats aren't (weren't?) E2E encrypted).
What you say or send on WA is private. Meta cannot see that. Nor governments nor your ISP or your router. Only you and the person or people you sent it to can read that.
It's a d*ck move if they then publicize this. And, as others pointed out, illegal even in many jurisdictions: AFAIK, it is in my country.
This seems sketchy to me.
Processing them (like compressing them to mp3 files or storing them in cloud storage) is probably legal in most cases.
The potential problem with LLMs is that they use your input to train themselves.
As of right now, the legal status of AI is very much up in the air. It's looking like AI training will be exempt from things like copyright laws (because how else would you train an LLM without performing the biggest book piracy operation in history?), and if that happens things like personal rights may also fall to the AI training overlords.
I personally don't think using this is illegal. I'm pretty sure 100% of LinkedIn messages are being passed through AI already, as are all WhatsApp business accounts and any similar service. I suppose we'll have to wait for someone to get caught using these tools and the problem making it to a high enough court to form jurisprudence.
This might a actually be helpful for people with poor memory or neurodivergent minds, to help surface relative context to continue their conversation.
Or sales people to help with their customer relationship management.
It's a closed source client. End to end encryption means nothing.
