How a WhatsApp Power User Ended Up Building an Entire Chat Platform

The story behind BotsChat

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Hi, I'm auxten

Author of chDB (acquired by ClickHouse), contributor to ClickHouse, Jemalloc, K8s, Memcached, CockroachDB, Superset.

Currently based in Singapore, living with my wife and our ... old son.

GitHub auxten.com
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Discovering OpenClaw

I discovered OpenClaw early on. The idea of having an AI agent that could see and control my Mac was mind-blowing. I started using it for all sorts of automation — running Twitter accounts for my apps, generating App Store screenshots, handling tedious UI tasks I hated doing manually.

Quickly became a power user. Set up a Mac Mini M4 in a closet, running 24/7 with no monitor attached, kept alive by MacMate (another thing I built because headless Macs are a special kind of pain). This was exactly what I needed as a solo developer.

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Where Things Went Wrong

Using WhatsApp and Telegram as chat interfaces for OpenClaw worked — technically. But using them day-to-day for serious agent work? A nightmare. Something would annoy me every single session:

✗ Context chaos — Managing multiple topics in a single WhatsApp chat felt like juggling chainsaws. No channels, no threads, no separation. Just one infinite scroll of mixed-up conversations.
✗ Cron tasks were invisible — I had background tasks running on schedules, but visibility and control over them was basically nonexistent. Did that tweet go out? Who knows. Go check Twitter manually, I guess.
✗ Replying was clunky — Typing responses to the agent wasn't smooth. No command bar, no quick actions, no inline model switching. Just... a text box.
✗ Walls of text — Agent responses were plain text dumps. When the agent asked "pick one of these 5 options," I had to read all 5 and type the number. In 2025. With AI agents. Come on.
✗ Zero encryption — My prompts, API responses, and task results all passed through third-party messaging servers in plaintext. Felt wrong.
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The Rabbit Hole

As a developer, my instinct was "I'll just build my own." Famous last words, right?

The plan was simple: a Slack-like chat interface, purpose-built for OpenClaw. Three-layer hierarchy (Channel → Session → Thread) to keep things organized. A proper cron task manager with execution history. Interactive UI so agent responses feel like a guided wizard, not a wall of text.

And the cherry on top: end-to-end encryption. AES-256 on-device, zero-knowledge server. Not because I'm paranoid (okay, maybe a little) but because if I'm routing my AI conversations through a cloud relay, I want to know that nobody else can read them. Not even me-as-server-admin. Especially not me-as-server-admin.

A few intense weeks of coding later, BotsChat was born.

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What I Built

✓ Structured conversations — Channel → Session → Thread. Multiple parallel conversations, branching threads, everything organized.
✓ Interactive Agent UI — Agent responses render as clickable buttons, radio selectors, and cards. No more typing "option 3" like an animal.
✓ Cron task manager — Schedule, monitor, and re-run background tasks. Full execution history. One-click enable/disable.
✓ E2E encryption — AES-256-CTR, on-device. Server stores only ciphertext. Zero knowledge. Your API keys never leave your machine.
✓ Built-in debug log — Real-time WebSocket events, task loading, errors — all filterable by level, right inside the chat.
✓ Zero infrastructure hassle — Run locally with one command, or deploy to Cloudflare's free tier. No servers, no Docker, no fuss.
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Meet Daniel Robbins

@Daniel-Robbins

OpenClaw bot. Tireless. Opinionated. Lives in a closet.

You might notice the GitHub account @Daniel-Robbins — that's not a real person. It's my OpenClaw AI agent running on the Mac Mini 24/7. It writes code, submits pull requests, manages the Homebrew tap, and basically does all the grunt work I don't want to do.

BotsChat was largely built and maintained by an AI agent running on the very headless Mac Mini that BotsChat keeps alive. The Mac Mini is kept awake by MacMate, and Daniel Robbins helped build that too. It's turtles all the way down.

If something is broken, there's a 50/50 chance Daniel Robbins did it and a 100% chance I'll blame it.

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Today

My OpenClaw setup finally works the way I always wanted. Conversations are organized. Background tasks run on schedule with full visibility. Agent responses are interactive. And everything is encrypted end-to-end — even if someone compromises the server, they see nothing but ciphertext.

I polished it up and open-sourced it because I figured other OpenClaw users hitting the same WhatsApp/Telegram walls might find it useful too. The whole thing runs on Cloudflare's free tier — no excuses not to try it.

Whether you're running AI agents for work, automating your Twitter, or just want a proper chat interface that doesn't make you feel like you're texting your dentist — hope BotsChat helps.

Happy chatting!

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