If you’ve ever had to work with Meta’s Developer Dashboard to manage WhatsApp Business Accounts (WABA), you know the “click-fest” I’m talking about.
Finding a specific Phone Number ID, grabbing a temporary access token, or just sending a simple test message involves navigating through multiple tabs, models, and nested menus. It’s a context-switch nightmare.
That’s why I built meta-dev-cli.
The “Stay in the Terminal” Philosophy
Developers (at least the ones I like talking to) want to stay in their flow state. That means staying in VS Code or the terminal.
The goal of this CLI is simple: Whatever you can do in the dashboard, you should be able to do with one command.
Want to send a message?
meta wa send +1234567890 "Hey, it works! 🚀"
Need to check your WABA status or phone numbers?
meta wa phone-numbers
It’s fast, it’s low-friction, and it doesn’t require a browser.
Agent-First Design
One of the most important features of meta-dev-cli is that it wasn’t just built for humans. I built it with AI agents in mind—like Cursor, Claude Code, or GitHub Copilot.
Every single command supports a --json flag.
When you run meta apps list --json, you get a structured payload that an LLM can actually parse and act upon. This makes it incredibly easy to “hire” an agent to manage your Meta apps, automate deployments, or even build a custom monitoring dashboard.
Why does this matter?
Tools shouldn’t just provide functionality; they should reduce cognitive load.
By pulling the Meta ecosystem into the terminal, we’re not just saving a few clicks—we’re making the entire development lifecycle more predictable and automatable.
If you’re working with the WhatsApp Cloud API, give it a spin:
pip install -e . (from the repo)
Let’s keep the dashboard for settings we change once a year, and use the terminal for everything else.