Can AI replace Wabery?

KINDA · weekend project

price $15/moyou'd save $180/yrbuild time multi-daycategory 🛠️ dev toolsreplaced by 0 peoplebuild unverified

The core loop (send, receive, verify webhooks, retry, inspect conversations) is one-shottable for a single business using Meta's WhatsApp Cloud API. What you cannot one-shot is the reason managed WhatsApp providers exist as products: production messaging infrastructure must stay reliable, secure, monitored, and compliant, while onboarding other businesses requires Meta business verification, app review, and approval for the relevant Tech Provider and Meta Business Partner capabilities. The honest DIY move is to build for your own verified WhatsApp Business Account and phone number; matching Wabery as a multi-tenant provider means operating that infrastructure and completing Meta's approval process.

the prompt

Build me a single-business WhatsApp API gateway to replace Wabery for my own company. Requirements:

- Node 22 + TypeScript + Fastify + PostgreSQL; Docker Compose behind Caddy
  HTTPS on my always-on VPS.
- One Meta WhatsApp Business Account and phone number only. Keep the Cloud API
  access token, app secret, verify token, and phone number ID in .env.
- An authenticated REST API to send text, template, and media messages. Accept
  an Idempotency-Key and return both the local record and Meta message ID.
- Implement Meta webhook verification and verify POST signatures with the app
  secret. Persist each event before responding, deduplicate it, and normalize
  inbound messages, delivery statuses, and errors into PostgreSQL.
- Use pg-boss for outbound jobs with three retries and exponential backoff.
  Failed jobs go to a dead-letter view and can be replayed manually.
- Forward normalized events to one configured webhook, signed with HMAC. Store
  every attempt, response status, and next retry time.
- A small admin inbox behind one ADMIN_TOKEN: conversations, message status,
  failed jobs, webhook health, and a reply box. No public user accounts.
- Add health/readiness endpoints, structured logs, migrations, rate limits,
  daily database backups, and tests for signatures, deduplication, and retries.
- No telemetry beyond calls to Meta. Secrets must never be logged or committed.
- Out of scope: multi-tenant customer onboarding, Embedded Signup, billing,
  Meta Business Partner or Tech Provider status, WhatsApp Flows tooling, hosted
  functions, MCP, and production SLAs. Those require infrastructure and Meta
  review or approval beyond what code can provide.
- README: exact Meta app, WABA, number, webhook, and template setup; business
  verification caveats; deployment, backup restore, and secret rotation.

$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter) or copy it raw

why people still pay

The REST endpoints are the easy part. Wabery packages Meta onboarding, secure multi-tenant infrastructure, durable event delivery, Flows plumbing, monitoring, and ongoing API and policy changes into a service that is ready for production. A DIY gateway is reasonable for one business; becoming an approved and reliable provider for other businesses is a company, not a weekend project.

what you lose

xMeta Business Partner status and approved Tech Provider onboarding path

xturnkey onboarding for multiple customer businesses and phone numbers

xmanaged queues, retries, monitoring, security, and production reliability

xWhatsApp Flows builder, encryption, and data-exchange hosting

xhosted functions, MCP tooling, and a production team inbox

prior art · use these instead of building, if you'd ratherMeta WhatsApp Cloud APIThe official API is the shortest DIY path for a single business that can complete Meta's setup and verification.↗