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?

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batuhanicoz 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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oulipo2 2 days ago | parent [-]

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

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batuhanicoz 2 days ago | parent [-]

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

	▲	kandros 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting use case, mind explaining more?

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TZubiri 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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3form 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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recsv-heredoc 2 days ago | parent [-]

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!

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blitzar 2 days ago | parent [-]

> 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 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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dinakars777 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

WhatsMeow is stable unlike Baileys which faces challenges with maintainability.