Introduction
What the WhatsApp AI assistant platform is, who it is for, and what it does today.
What it is
A configurable AI assistant that answers customer questions on WhatsApp for service businesses. Each business (a workspace) links its own WhatsApp account, uploads its approved documents, and publishes an assistant. Customers message the number; the assistant replies in their language using only the business's own knowledge, cites its sources internally, and hands the conversation to staff when it cannot or should not answer.
WhatsApp is reached through a self-hosted OpenWA gateway: each workspace links an ordinary WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app account as a linked device by scanning a QR code. There is no Meta app, Cloud API registration or Embedded Signup.
Unofficial integration, ban risk
OpenWA is not affiliated with Meta. Automating a WhatsApp account can violate WhatsApp's terms and get the number restricted or banned. Use a dedicated number, keep volume low, and message only customers who opted in. See Ban-risk practices.
Who it is for
Equipment distributors and installation or service businesses with repeat customers, product documentation, and an existing order or service system. The product is sold as faster, more reliable service operations, not as generic FAQ automation.
What it does
- Private chats and, optionally, groups, through a linked WhatsApp account.
- Answers grounded in uploaded
.txtand.mddocuments, with full-text retrieval and enforced citations. - Burst debouncing (3 seconds), so several quick messages get one answer.
- A short AI disclosure on the first reply of a conversation.
- Voice notes: inbound notes are transcribed (Sarvam or ElevenLabs) and replies can be sent as voice notes, with text as the fallback.
- Human handoff: staff are emailed, the assistant goes quiet, and staff reply from the admin inbox or from the linked phone.
- A transactional outbox so replies are sent at most once and stale replies are discarded.
- Per-tenant isolation in the database (forced row level security) and an audit trail.
- Usage metering for model tokens and ingested chunks.
What it does not do yet
- Live calls: not supported by the gateway.
- Interactive buttons, templates and broadcasts: not available, and deliberately not built (reply-only keeps ban risk down).
- PDF, OCR, or website ingestion: only
.txtand.mdup to 5 MB. - Business actions (order lookup, ticket creation, bookings, payments).
How these docs are organised
Architecture
Monorepo layout and the full request flow.
Getting started
Gateway, environment, migrations, local run, deploy.
WhatsApp onboarding
Link a number by QR code or pairing code.
Knowledge and answers
Ingestion, retrieval, citations, models, cost.
Security
Unofficial API risk, signatures, isolation, prompt injection.
Operations
Session states, relinking, outbox states, retries.
OpenWA reference
Gateway, sessions, webhooks, media, ban-risk practices.