Turn your API into a Conversational Experience via WhatsApp

How we turn APIs into conversational experiences on WhatsApp with Inpla. A true story about frictionless validation, iteration, and automation.

Diego and I have been seeing for some time how the users of our customers in woku prefer WhatsApp to interact with the system. Two simple reasons:

1. It's conversational, so they don't need to learn how to use another platform.
2. It's immediate, there's no friction.

Come to think of it, no matter how intuitive an interface design is, there is always a learning curve. That's why when someone says "don't reinvent the wheel" in UX/UI, it's good advice. If something is already working well, use it.

The problem is that designing interfaces is not trivial. UX is not child's play. And when José, from Kutamma, started talking to Diego about conversational agents to facilitate tasks, the idea sounded interesting... but confusing.

Two weeks later, I saw Diego and José working every night, entering code non-stop, but I noticed something strange. Until I finally saw it clearly: Diego was uncomfortable, insecure. As if he thought they were wasting their time.

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The moment everything clickedI

intervened. I told them,
"You're building without asking users."

They proved me right. So we decided to go straight to our customers. I asked them if they wanted to create, edit or consult information in a woku from WhatsApp.

At first, the idea was not well understood. So Diego created a mock-up of a WhatsApp conversation simulating the creation of a woku.

We found the first one interested. A user wanted to create a woku via WhatsApp. That was the turning point. Diego found the north. We got together that same night with José to continue building Inpla.

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But what is Inpla really?

This question was answered when I saw José and Diego create a Kutamma event entirely on WhatsApp.

My reaction:
"Wait... how did they do that?"

I immediately replied,
"They connected Kutamma's API endpoints with WhatsApp and put AI on it."

But José corrected me:
"No, it's much more entertaining."

Then José explained to me:
"Since Woku and Kutamma are different startups, we had to build something more flexible. Inpla not only connects APIs with WhatsApp automatically, but also interprets the API documentation and allows a user to interact with any system through a conversation, thanks to a group of AI agents."

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Companies wanted it (and we didn't know it)

While they were building, I kept looking for woku customers who wanted to use WhatsApp to interact with our services. There was not only one, but several, and with different requirements:

✔️ Create wokus
✔️ Get Info
✔️ Monitor Review Captures

This is when everything started to fall into place. With Diego refocused and José materializing ideas into code, Inpla began to take shape.

They bought cell phone chips, connected Meta's API, continued polishing agents and each company obtained its WhatsApp number to use Inpla's services.

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This is how Inpla works in 5 steps

For a company to use Inpla, for now you must follow this flow:

1. Have documentation in JSON (it can be generated with Postman).
2. Authenticate to Inpla (probably the CTO will do this).
3. Register the company in Inpla and upload the documentation with the objectives of each endpoint.
4. Configure WhatsApp: add the production token, WhatsApp ID, and webhook.
5. Set up secure authentication: Create two endpoints to search for users and authenticate with token.

After this, you just have to share the WhatsApp number with customers. A simple "Hello!" can start a conversation that accomplishes a goal. In our case: create a woku.

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Real-world

validation

Now, Dani from Kutamma is validating with his clients if this works for them. Although we believe with all faith that it does, it works for them, because Kutamma uses WhatsApp as its only support channel. But in technology, never assume, always try.

So, Dani, if you read this, we are waiting for you.