wacli

• You want your agent to send a WhatsApp message to a specific contact or group on your behalf (e.g., notifying a client, alerting a team group).
• You need to search past WhatsApp conversations for specific keywords, dates, or contacts programmatically.
• You want to sync and backfill WhatsApp history into a local store for downstream processing or lookup.
• You need to send files or documents (PDFs, images, etc.) to a WhatsApp recipient with an optional caption.

• You are chatting with the agent via WhatsApp yourself — OpenClaw handles those conversations automatically; do not invoke wacli for your own chat session.
• You need to receive or respond to incoming WhatsApp messages in real time; wacli is an outbound/query tool, not an inbox listener.
• The recipient or message content is ambiguous — always confirm details before sending.

Use wacli send text to deliver a message to any phone number or WhatsApp group JID. Supports both direct chats (<number>@s.whatsapp.net) and group chats (<id>@g.us).

Attach and deliver files (PDFs, images, and more) to any WhatsApp contact or group using wacli send file, with an optional caption string.

Query your synced WhatsApp history by keyword, date range, and chat using wacli messages search. Useful for retrieving past conversation context before taking action.

wacli chats list lets you search for contacts or groups by name or number, and returns their JIDs needed for sending or searching within a specific chat.

Use wacli history backfill to retrieve older messages from WhatsApp's servers into the local store. Requires your phone to be online; results are best-effort.

wacli auth handles QR-based login and initial sync. wacli sync --follow keeps your local store continuously updated. wacli doctor helps diagnose connection issues.

An agent detects a meeting delay or status change and uses wacli send text to notify the relevant contact or group WhatsApp chat without any manual steps.

An agent generates a PDF report or agenda and delivers it directly to a WhatsApp recipient using wacli send file with a descriptive caption.

Before drafting a follow-up, an agent searches WhatsApp history for a specific topic or keyword (e.g., wacli messages search "invoice" --after 2025-01-01) to surface relevant prior messages.

A workflow syncs and backfills WhatsApp message history into a local store (~/.wacli) so downstream tools can query, index, or analyze conversation data.