Build a WhatsApp AI Agent in 10 Minutes with wati-cli

Build a WhatsApp AI Agent in 10 Minutes with wati-cli No dashboard. No drag-and-drop. Just your terminal, an LLM, and a few commands. We just shipped @wati-io/wati-cli — a command-line tool that lets you build WhatsApp AI agents entirely from your terminal. Every command returns structured JSON. Every exit code is meaningful. It's built for scripts, automation pipelines, and AI agents — not humans clicking buttons. Here's how to go from zero to a working AI support agent in 10 minutes. What we're building A WhatsApp AI agent that: Listens for incoming customer messages via webhooks Pulls the customer's profile and recent conversation history Uses an LLM to generate a contextual reply Sends the reply back on WhatsApp Assigns complex issues to a human No dashboard involved. No flow builder. Just code. Prerequisites Node.js 18+ A Wati account ( wati.io ) An Anthropic or OpenAI API key (or any LLM provider) A public URL for webhooks (use ngrok for local dev) npm install -g @wati-io/wati-cl