wchatapi
wchatapi is a self-hosted WhatsApp messaging API built by Mustafa Erhan Portakal on Node.js, Express 5 and Baileys, with a Next.js panel for monitoring sessions. It covers API key validation, HMAC-signed webhooks, rate limiting and graceful shutdown, and runs in Docker.
What it does
wchatapi sends and receives WhatsApp messages from a service you host yourself, rather than through a third-party provider. A Next.js panel sits alongside it for monitoring session state.
What it handles
The parts that matter in a messaging API are the boring ones, so those are what the project covers:
- API key validation on inbound requests.
- HMAC-signed webhooks, so a receiver can verify a callback genuinely came from this service.
- Rate limiting, because the upstream will not tolerate an unbounded send loop.
- Graceful shutdown, so a restart does not drop an in-flight session.
It runs in Docker.