Atich

A terminal WhatsApp client that renders every message as a structured JSON event, like tailing a webhook/queue consumer log — not a chat UI.

{"ts":"14:22:03.912","event":"msg","from":"john.d","body":"hey are you free later"}
{"ts":"14:22:41.204","event":"sent","to":"john.d","body":"yeah give me 10"}

Install

As a global CLI from npm:

npm install -g atich
atich

Or without installing, via npx:

npx atich

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/aakash-a-dev/atich.git
cd atich
npm install
npm run build
npm start

On first run it prints a QR code — scan it from WhatsApp on your phone under Linked devices. The session is saved to ~/.config/atich/session so you won't need to re-scan on later runs.

Usage

Once connected, the process streams incoming/outgoing messages, one line per event. By default this shows raw JSON plus internal diagnostics (/debug toggles a clean Name: message view instead). Type into the same terminal to send:

• /list — show every known contact; ↑/↓ to move, Enter to open, Esc to cancel. Populated by actively pulling your WhatsApp app-state (sock.resyncAppState) right after connecting, plus anyone who messages you or you message. Only shows contacts saved in your phone's address book that are also on WhatsApp, not arbitrary WhatsApp users.
• /open <name or number fragment> — open a contact directly; if more than one matches, the same ↑/↓ picker as /list opens to disambiguate.
• /search <name or number fragment> — same as /open, but always opens the picker even for a single match.
• /close (alias /leave) — deactivate the current chat without quitting.
• /debug — toggle between the raw event/diagnostic view and a clean, human-readable chat view. Everything is logged to ~/.config/atich/atich.log regardless of this setting.
• /logout — unlink this device from WhatsApp and clear the local session.
• /login — reconnect and re-pair (prompts a fresh QR code) after /logout.
• anything else — sent as a message to the active chat
• /quit (alias /exit) — exit

Testing

Run this from your own laptop's regular network, not a cloud VM/CI/sandbox environment. WhatsApp's servers reject WebSocket handshakes from known datacenter/hosting-provider IP ranges as a bot-mitigation measure — this shows up as an immediate "connection closed (Connection Failure)" before the QR code ever appears, and no code change fixes it. It's an IP-reputation check on WhatsApp's side, not a bug in this client.

To verify end to end:

1. npm start on your laptop → a QR code should print within a few seconds.
2. Scan it from WhatsApp → Linked devices on your phone.
3. Confirm {"event":"status","body":"connected"} appears.
4. Send yourself (or have someone send you) a WhatsApp message — confirm a {"event":"msg", ...} line appears.
5. Run /list, then /open <name>, then type a message — confirm it arrives on the recipient's phone and a {"event":"sent", ...} line prints locally.

Notes

• Contacts arrive via an actively-triggered app-state resync (sock.resyncAppState), not by passively waiting for WhatsApp to send a history-sync notification — the latter often never arrives on a reconnect to an already-linked session, which is why contacts could come up empty even minutes after connecting in earlier versions of this client.
• Uses @whiskeysockets/baileys, an unofficial WhatsApp Web protocol implementation. This is not an official WhatsApp client — accounts using unofficial clients can occasionally be flagged or temporarily restricted by WhatsApp.
• Pinned to the 6.7.23 "legacy" line (CommonJS-era predecessor patched for the message-spoofing advisory GHSA-qvv5-jq5g-4cgg). 7.x is the actively developed line if you want to track upstream more closely later.
• No message history is persisted to disk beyond the current process's in-memory contact list — restarting loses the /list cache (not the WhatsApp session itself).