# Show HN: WhatsKept – Searchable,agent-queryable WhatsApp history from iOS backup

> Source: <https://github.com/alkait/whatskept>
> Published: 2026-06-20 09:20:20+00:00

Agent-queryable WhatsApp history from an iOS backup, in Go.

A single self-contained binary. Drives iOS backups, decrypts WhatsApp's ChatStorage.sqlite, and feeds it — messages, images, voice notes, and PDF documents — into a searchable SQLite + FTS5 workspace that an agent can query directly.

[What you can ask](#what-you-can-ask)[What this is (and what it isn't)](#what-this-is-and-what-it-isnt)[Screenshots](#screenshots)[Pipeline](#pipeline)[Download](#download)[How this was built](#how-this-was-built)[Privacy](#privacy)

Once the workspace is built, point an LLM coding agent at the folder (Windsurf, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code + Copilot,etc …) and ask. A few examples of what becomes possible:

| Use case | Example prompt |
|---|---|
Find a photo or voice note you only vaguely remember |
"Find the photo Sara sent of a handwritten recipe — I think it had cardamom in it." |
Recover decisions from a busy group chat |
"Pull every message in the House Reno group about the kitchen budget and tell me what we landed on." |
Recall a specific fact someone sent you |
"What dosage did Dr. Patel say for the antibiotic, and how many days?" |
Track receipts, orders, and tracking numbers |
"List every tracking number anyone sent me in the last 6 months and flag the ones I never confirmed." |
Summarize a relationship or thread |
"Summarize what my brother and I have talked about this year — what's been on his mind?" |
Reconstruct a timeline |
"Build a timeline of my 2023 — major events, trips, life changes — using only what's in WhatsApp." |
Index recommendations friends have sent |
"List every restaurant, book, and movie friends have recommended in the last 2 years, grouped by category." |

WhatsKept is a **data pipeline**, not an AI assistant. Its entire job
is to take an encrypted iOS backup and turn it into a clean, local,
agent-friendly workspace on disk.

**What it does**

It pulls a fresh backup off your iPhone, decrypts WhatsApp's messages, and turns it into one searchable folder on disk — ready for a coding agent to read. Optionally, with your own OpenRouter's API key, it can describe images, transcribe voice notes, and extract text from PDFs so the agent can query them too.

**What it does not do**

It doesn't chat, summarize, or answer questions on its own — that's the agent's job. Nothing leaves your machine unless you opt in to cloud enrichment, and your iPhone backup is never modified.

Think of it as the **plumbing between your iPhone and your AI agent**

Three tabs, in the order you walk through them:

The whole idea in one line: WhatsKept turns your encrypted iPhone backup into a plain, local database — then gets out of the way so your agent can read it.

```
flowchart LR
    classDef src   fill:#fff7ed,stroke:#fb923c,color:#7c2d12
    classDef proc  fill:#fef3c7,stroke:#f59e0b,color:#78350f
    classDef data  fill:#ecfdf5,stroke:#10b981,color:#064e3b
    classDef agent fill:#f5f3ff,stroke:#8b5cf6,color:#4c1d95

    BK["📱 iOS backup"]:::src --> WK["WhatsKept"]:::proc --> DB[("💾 Local database")]:::data
    AGENT["🤖 Your AI agent"]:::agent --> DB
```

Everything stays on your own computer, and the agent you already use does the asking.

**macOS** (Apple Silicon) — recommended, one Terminal command:

```
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://github.com/alkait/WhatsKept/releases/latest/download/install.sh)"
```

Or [download the app](https://github.com/alkait/WhatsKept/releases/latest/download/WhatsKept-darwin-arm64.app.zip), unzip, and double-click `Install WhatsKept.command`

.

**Windows** (10/11, x64) — [download the app](https://github.com/alkait/WhatsKept/releases/latest/download/WhatsKept-windows-amd64.zip), unzip, and run `whatskept.exe`

.

Built in a weekend with

Claude Opus 4.7, burning millions of tokens so you don't have to. Practically every line of code in this repo is AI-generated. I won't pretend I read it line by line — I didn't — but I stood behindevery architecture decision: how the backup is decrypted, where secrets live, what crosses a network boundary, how the workspace is laid out, why the binary ships self-contained. The agent wrote the code; the design, the trade-offs, and the privacy posture are mine.

**The good**

**No telemetry, no analytics, no accounts.** WhatsKept sends none of your data anywhere — the only automatic call is a version check to GitHub when the app opens. Cloud enrichment is the one exception, and it's opt-in (below).**Enrichment is opt-in and cloud-only.** Image*descriptions*, voice*transcription*, and PDF*text extraction*run through cloud AI models (OpenRouter) — they're the features that send the images / voice notes / documents you choose to run off the device.

**What to be cautious about**

**You're keeping a decrypted copy of your entire WhatsApp on your computer.** Even though it stays local, that plaintext database of every message, photo, and voice note is a risk — anyone with access to your machine can read all of it. You own that risk.**Opting in to image, voice, and PDF enrichment sends that content to public AI models.** Every image, voice message, and PDF you run through enrichment is uploaded to a third-party AI provider to be described, transcribed, or read.**Everyday querying also sends your messages to public AI providers.** When you ask your agent a question, it sends the relevant chunks of your WhatsApp history to whatever LLM provider that agent uses.