WhatsApp Support Joins Multi-Platform Chat SDK

Vercel has extended its Chat SDK with official WhatsApp adapter support, allowing developers to deploy bots across multiple messaging platforms using unified code. This brings WhatsApp to the existing roster of supported platforms: Slack, Discord, GitHub, Teams, and Telegram.

What's New

The WhatsApp adapter enables teams to:

• Send and receive messages with reaction support
• Handle multimedia including images, voice messages, stickers, and document downloads
• Share locations via Google Maps URLs
• Auto-chunk long messages for platform compatibility
• Track read receipts for message delivery confirmation

Getting Started

Developers can implement the adapter with minimal setup:

import { Chat } from "chat";
import { createWhatsAppAdapter } from "@chat-adapter/whatsapp";

const bot = new Chat({
  userName: "mybot",
  adapters: {
    whatsapp: createWhatsAppAdapter(),
  },
});

bot.onNewMention(async (thread, message) => {
  await thread.post(`You said: ${message.text}`);
});

Important Limitations

Teams should be aware of platform constraints when building WhatsApp bots:

• 24-hour messaging window: Bots can only respond to users within 24 hours of their initial message
• No message history: History, editing, and deletion are not supported
• Card rendering: Interactive cards display as reply buttons with up to three options, falling back to formatted text

The adapter was developed with community contributions (PR #102 from @ghellach), demonstrating Vercel's commitment to collaborative open-source development. Full documentation and adapter examples are available in the Chat SDK docs.