You can now send a WhatsApp campaign by typing a sentence into Claude or ChatGPT.
Not a prompt that writes the campaign for you to copy and paste somewhere else. The actual send, to a real audience, from your own WhatsApp Business API number, with the recipient count shown to you before anything goes out.
This is possible because of MCP, and it changes how teams work with the WhatsApp Business API. Here is what MCP is, why it matters for WhatsApp, and how to connect it in about a minute.
What is MCP?
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It is an open standard that lets an AI assistant connect to an external system and actually use it, rather than just talk about it.
Before MCP, if you wanted ChatGPT to do something in another tool, you built a custom integration for that one pairing. Every tool, every assistant, a separate build.
MCP replaces that with one standard. A tool exposes an MCP server once, and any MCP client can connect to it. Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor and a growing list of others all speak it.
The practical effect: your AI assistant stops being a place where you draft things, and becomes a place where you do them.
Why connect the WhatsApp Business API to an AI assistant?
The WhatsApp Business API is powerful and, for most teams, inconvenient.
It sits behind a dashboard. Checking what came in overnight means opening a tab. Launching a campaign means building an audience, picking a template, previewing, scheduling. Updating a contact means finding the contact. None of it is hard, all of it is friction, and friction is why marketing teams send fewer campaigns than they planned to.
Connecting it to an assistant you already have open removes that step. Some things this makes genuinely faster:
Reading what happened. "Summarise today's unanswered WhatsApp chats and flag anyone asking about refunds." That is a question you would not bother opening a dashboard to answer, so today it goes unanswered.
Sending a campaign. "Send the order_ready template to everyone tagged VIP, tomorrow at 9am Nairobi time." The assistant builds the campaign, validates it, and shows you the audience count and a preview before it schedules anything.
Building automation. "Draft a welcome flow with Billing, Sales and talk-to-a-human branches." You get a draft chatbot flow you can open and edit.
Keeping data current. "Add Test Contact, +1 555 0100, and tag them as a webinar lead."
Updating commerce. "Put the linen shirt on sale at 2,500 KES until stock runs out."
The common thread is that none of these are things you could not already do. They are things you would not have bothered to do.
How to connect WhatsApp to Claude
Intelli runs an MCP server for the WhatsApp Business API. One URL, one sign-in, no API keys.
https://mcp.intelliconcierge.com/mcpOpen Settings, then Connectors
Choose Add custom connector and paste the URL
Click Connect and sign in with your Intelli account
Authentication is OAuth, through your existing account. You never create, paste or store an API key.
To check it worked, ask Claude which Intelli organizations it can see. It should list the organisations on your account.
How to connect WhatsApp to ChatGPT
Turn on developer mode in Settings, if your plan offers it
Create a new app or connector and paste the same URL
Choose OAuth as the authentication method and sign in
Some ChatGPT workspaces restrict custom connectors. If the option is missing, your workspace admin controls it.
What about Claude Code and Cursor?
Both work. Claude Code is a single command:
claude mcp add intelli --transport http https://mcp.intelliconcierge.com/mcpCursor and other MCP clients take the same URL as a remote streamable HTTP server. The client opens a browser window for you to sign in the first time.
The obvious concern: can the AI message my customers without asking?
No, and this is the part that matters most.
An MCP server that can send WhatsApp messages is an MCP server that can send the wrong WhatsApp message to ten thousand people. Any serious implementation has to assume that and design against it.
Reading is instant. Acting is not. Anything that sends, creates, edits or deletes stops and shows you the exact recipient, content and count before it proceeds.
It signs in as you. The assistant can only reach the organisations and actions your own role allows. It cannot see channel access tokens.
It does not retry blindly. If a send times out, it checks what actually happened before trying again. Customers do not receive the same message twice.
It verifies after writing. Changes to assistants, contacts, products and automation are read back after saving. A mismatch is reported, not quietly treated as success.
One distinction worth understanding: when the assistant reports a message as accepted or a campaign as scheduled, that means WhatsApp received the request. Delivery and read rates are a separate question, and you ask for the campaign statistics to see them.
What you cannot do yet
Being straight about this saves you finding out mid-task.
Chat replies are text only. Images, files and voice notes still go through the inbox.
Knowledge base uploads are capped at 2 MB per file, and spreadsheets are not supported yet.
The assistant cannot crawl a website into a knowledge base. Paste or upload the content instead.
Product images and variants are managed in the dashboard. Names, prices, stock and visibility can be edited through MCP.
Edits apply to your Intelli store, not to your Meta catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
What is an MCP server? An MCP server is a service that exposes a tool's capabilities to AI assistants using the Model Context Protocol. Any MCP-compatible client, including Claude and ChatGPT, can connect to it and use those capabilities.
Can ChatGPT send WhatsApp messages? Yes, through an MCP connection to a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider. ChatGPT itself has no WhatsApp access. Connecting it to an MCP server that holds your WhatsApp Business API credentials is what makes it possible, and the send still goes through the official WhatsApp Business API.
Do I need an API key? No. Authentication is OAuth through your existing account. There is no key to create, paste or rotate.
Is this the official WhatsApp Business API? Yes. Messages run through the official WhatsApp Business API via a Meta Business Partner. This is not an automation layer on a consumer WhatsApp account, which violates WhatsApp's terms and risks your number.
Can my whole team use it? Yes. Each person connects with their own account and gets their own permissions. The assistant can only do what that person could do.
What happens if I ask it to do something it cannot do? It tells you. The tool list is fixed, and anything outside it is not attempted.
Does it work with WhatsApp only? No. The same connection reaches Instagram, Messenger and website chat conversations, plus contacts, templates, campaigns, chatbot flows and commerce.
Try it
Connecting takes about a minute. If you already have an Intelli account, paste the URL into Claude or ChatGPT and sign in.
https://mcp.intelliconcierge.com/mcpFull setup instructions for every client, and the complete tool reference, are at intelliconcierge.com/mcp.
If you do not have a WhatsApp Business API number yet, start a free trial and connect one first.
