wacli — WhatsApp from the CLI

wacli is a Go CLI built on the whatsmeow library. It pairs to the user's WhatsApp account as a multi-device companion (like WhatsApp Web), syncs messages to a local SQLite DB at ~/.wacli/wacli.db, and exposes commands to read, search, and send.

Repo: https://github.com/steipete/wacli · install: brew install steipete/tap/wacli.

Mental model — sync vs. read

Two distinct phases:

1. Sync (wacli sync / wacli auth --follow) connects to WhatsApp servers and writes new messages to the local DB. Runs as a long-lived process. New messages only land in the DB while sync is running.
2. Read (wacli messages list/search/show, wacli chats list) queries the local DB. Fast, offline, no network. Always reads what sync has already written.

So when the user asks "what did Alice send yesterday?" — the answer comes from the local DB. If the DB is stale, the user needs to run sync first. Use wacli doctor to check state.

Critical gotchas

• Single-writer lock. The store is locked while wacli sync (or any connecting command) holds it. Trying to send while sync is running fails with a lock error. Tell the user to stop sync (pkill -f 'wacli sync') before sending, or run wacli send ... in a window where sync isn't running. wacli doctor shows lock state.
• History is shallow by default. Initial sync only pulls recent messages from the user's primary device. Older history requires wacli history backfill --chat <jid> --requests N. Best-effort, may not return.
• JIDs, not phone numbers. Most read commands take --chat <jid> (e.g. 61400000000@s.whatsapp.net for DMs, <id>@g.us for groups). wacli send text accepts --to as either phone or JID. To find a JID: wacli chats list --json or wacli contacts search "name" --json.
• FTS5 may not be available. wacli doctor shows FTS5 false on stock macOS SQLite — search falls back to LIKE, which is slower and less precise. Still usable for typical agent queries.
• Do not commit ~/.wacli/. It contains the session keypair and message DB.

Setup (once)

brew install steipete/tap/wacli
wacli auth                # shows QR; pair from phone → WhatsApp → Linked Devices

After pairing, kick off an initial sync that exits when idle:

wacli sync --once --idle-exit 30s

Or leave a follower running in the background to keep the local DB hot:

wacli sync --follow >/tmp/wacli-sync.log 2>&1 &

Shared computer / already paired

• Check first. Run wacli doctor / wacli auth status before pairing. If AUTHENTICATED true, do not run wacli auth again — that creates another linked device.
• Shared machine. The binary and store live on the shared home directory. Any agent on that computer uses the same wacli session. No second install, no second QR.
• Linux store. Default store is ~/.local/state/wacli (XDG). macOS is ~/.wacli. Binary is often ~/.local/bin/wacli.
• One lock. wacli sync / wacli auth holds a single-writer lock for everyone. Do not leave wacli sync --follow running. Reads (messages search/list, chats list) are fine when unlocked. Stop sync before send.
• Install on Linux if missing. Prefer the GitHub release binary (openclaw/wacli, linux_amd64) onto ~/.local/bin/wacli. Homebrew tap openclaw/tap/wacli also works where brew exists.

Always pass --json when an agent is consuming output

Default output is human-formatted (columns, truncation, senders shown as bare @lid numbers). --json produces structured rows that pipe straight into jq. Use it everywhere the result feeds back to Claude — and never attribute a quote from the human output (see "Attribution" below).

Every --json response is an envelope: {"success":bool, "data":…, "error":…}. The payload is under .data:

• messages list/search → .data.messages[], each with PascalCase keys: ChatJID, ChatName, SenderJID, Timestamp, FromMe, Text, DisplayText, MediaType, Snippet.
• chats list → .data[] with JID, Kind, Name, LastMessageTS.
• contacts search → .data[] with JID, Phone, Name, Alias, Tags.

wacli messages search "magic tags" --limit 20 --json \
  | jq '.data.messages[] | {ChatName, FromMe, Timestamp, Text}'

Attribution — who sent each message (read before quoting anyone)

Getting "who said X" wrong is the most common and most damaging wacli mistake. Two traps cause it; both are avoided by the same two rules.

1. FromMe is the only reliable speaker signal — never infer the sender from the JID or the human output. In a DM both sides come back. Only the account owner is reliably identifiable, via the boolean FromMe. The other party's SenderJID is a raw @lid (e.g. 191624378347690@lid), not a name, and the same person appears under device variants (…@lid, …:19@lid). The human output prints your messages as me and theirs as the bare @lid. Rule: attribute every quote from FromMe — true = the account owner (you), false = the other party. Resolve a @lid to a name with wacli contacts search/show only for labelling, never for deciding direction.
2. Text is the message's own words; DisplayText/Snippet bundle quoted-reply context — so a search can pin a phrase on the wrong author. When B replies to A, B's DisplayText/Snippet contains A's quoted line, so a substring search matches both A's original and B's reply — making it look like B said A's words. Rule: when deciding who said a phrase, match the Text field only — never DisplayText or Snippet.

Correct attribution recipe — a clean transcript labelled by FromMe, using each message's own Text:

wacli messages list --chat <jid> --limit 200 --json \
  | jq -r '.data.messages[] | select(.Text != "")
           | (if .FromMe then "ME  " else "THEM" end) + " | " + .Timestamp + " | " + .Text'

Build any "who said what" answer from this — not from the human output, not from DisplayText. If a phrase isn't in anyone's own Text (only in quoted replies), it means nobody in the window said it as their own message — don't attribute it, and history backfill if it predates the sync window.

Read recipes

Find the chat / contact JID

# Browse chats sorted by recent activity
wacli chats list --limit 30 --json

# Substring match on a contact name
wacli contacts search "Alice" --json

# Show full contact record (aliases, tags, JID, push name)
wacli contacts show --jid <jid> --json

Search messages

# Global search across all chats
wacli messages search "<query>" --limit 50 --json

# Constrain to a chat
wacli messages search "<query>" --chat <jid> --json

# Constrain by sender (DMs include both sides; --from filters senders)
wacli messages search "<query>" --from <jid> --json

# Time window (RFC3339 or YYYY-MM-DD; --before is exclusive)
wacli messages search "<query>" --after 2026-04-01 --before 2026-04-28 --json

# Only media of a specific type
wacli messages search "" --chat <jid> --type image --json

List a chat's recent messages

wacli messages list --chat <jid> --limit 100 --json
wacli messages list --chat <jid> --after 2026-04-25 --json

Get context around a message

Once a search returns a hit, expand the surrounding thread:

wacli messages context --chat <jid> --id <message-id> --before 10 --after 10 --json

Pull older messages a primary device hasn't yet shared

wacli history backfill --chat <jid> --count 50 --requests 3 --wait 60s

This asks the user's phone to send a history slab. Best-effort — phone must be online and recently active.

Send recipes

Stop any running wacli sync before send commands, or they'll fail on the store lock.

Text

wacli send text --to <phone-or-jid> --message "your text"
# Phone form is auto-converted to JID; omit `+`. E.g. --to 61400000000

File (image / video / audio / document)

wacli send file --to <jid> --file /abs/path.png --caption "look at this"
wacli send file --to <jid> --file /abs/notes.pdf --filename "Meeting notes.pdf"

--mime overrides detection if wacli mis-classifies an attachment.

Group management

wacli groups list --json                              # known groups (from local DB)
wacli groups refresh                                  # pull fresh group list from server
wacli groups info --jid <group-jid>                   # participants, name, description
wacli groups join --code <invite-code>
wacli groups leave --jid <group-jid>
wacli groups participants add --jid <group> --participants <jid>,<jid>
wacli groups participants remove --jid <group> --participants <jid>
wacli groups invite get --jid <group-jid>             # current invite link

Media download

Search returned a media message ID? Pull the binary:

wacli media download --chat <jid> --id <message-id> --output /tmp/media

Outputs to the configured media dir under the store by default.

Diagnostics

wacli doctor                  # store path, lock state, auth, FTS availability
wacli doctor --connect        # try a live connection (requires lock be free)
wacli auth status             # auth-only check
wacli version

If LOCKED true and the user isn't expecting a sync running, kill it:

pkill -f 'wacli sync' && wacli doctor

Common agent flows

"Find that WhatsApp thread where we talked about X"

wacli messages search "X" --limit 30 --json \
  | jq '.data.messages[] | {ChatName, FromMe, Timestamp, Text}'

If a hit looks promising, fetch context:

wacli messages context --chat <jid> --id <message-id> --before 8 --after 8 --json

"Send Alice the link to Y"

ALICE=$(wacli contacts search "Alice" --json | jq -r '.data[0].JID')
wacli send text --to "$ALICE" --message "Y: https://..."

"What's in the family group lately?"

GROUP=$(wacli groups list --json | jq -r '.data[] | select(.Name=="Family") | .JID')
wacli messages list --chat "$GROUP" --limit 50 --after $(date -v-7d +%Y-%m-%d) --json

Confirm sync is fresh before reporting

wacli sync --once --idle-exit 15s   # foreground catch-up, ~15s
wacli messages list --chat <jid> --limit 5 --json

Output flags reference

Every command supports:

• --json — structured output (use this when piping to jq or returning to Claude)
• --store <dir> — alternate store dir (default ~/.wacli or $WACLI_STORE_DIR)
• --timeout <duration> — bound non-sync commands (default 5m)

What NOT to do

• Don't run wacli send ... while a wacli sync --follow is up — store is locked. Stop sync first.
• Don't paste a phone number with + or spaces to --to — strip to digits only (e.g. 61400000000).
• Don't try to send to a JID you fished out of message metadata that ends in @lid (linked device alias) — use the @s.whatsapp.net form. wacli contacts show returns the right one.
• Don't attribute a quote from the sender JID, the human output, or DisplayText/Snippet — only FromMe (direction) + the message's own Text (content) are reliable. See "Attribution" above.
• Don't expect old history to be there. Run wacli history backfill for a specific chat if the user asks about messages older than the sync window.
• Don't commit ~/.wacli/ — it contains session keys.