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

WhatsKept, a new open-source tool, extracts and decrypts WhatsApp history from iOS backups into a searchable local database that AI coding agents can query directly. The Go-based binary handles backup decryption, message extraction, and optional cloud enrichment for images and voice notes, keeping all data on the user's machine.

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.