Weekend project: turning a free Claude.ai account into a WhatsApp receptionist with zero API
Additional-Ladder-24 · reddit · 2026-10-29
A self-taught dev's weekend experiment: no API, just browser scripts turning the free Claude.ai plan into a WhatsApp receptionist, built in 2 hours.
Architecture: a script injected into WhatsApp Web watches incoming messages (allowlist only, ignoring groups/old chats), relays them via WebSocket to a local Node server, which forwards to an open Claude.ai tab where a second script injects the prompt and captures the streamed reply, then sends it back through WhatsApp Web. A live telemetry dashboard shows every event.
Lessons: a rate limiter (max 5 commands/min) prevented a reply loop; bot replies get an emoji tag and are ignored as inputs; WhatsApp Web's HTML changes often — incoming messages were once detected as outgoing, fixed by checking the delivery-tick icon.
Limits: bounded by the free usage cap, brittle to HTML changes, text-only, and the receptionist prompt has no business info yet. Not a product, shared for the architecture.
Related event: Dev Builds WhatsApp Receptionist with Free Claude Web, Zero API(2 posts)→
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