Kostia's WhatsApp recaps

The pitch

A friend, Dim, wanted to follow the 2026 World Cup without the hassle. The idea: he gets a WhatsApp recap of every match, with the score, right after the final whistle, without doing anything, and without me lifting a finger either.

The result is a small autonomous system running 24/7 on a server: it knows the fixtures, watches for the end of each match, and sends Dim the score. For the whole tournament. On its own.

Except it didn't stay between Dim and me. Other friends wanted in, and the feed opened up: today anyone can join the list in two clicks, and it grows match after match.

↑ Live, scores pulled from the ESPN API. The dashboard itself is in French. Open full screen ↗

How it's made

The system has three building blocks, all on a Hetzner server (a CX23 at a few euros a month, in Helsinki), so it runs whether my Mac is on or not.

1. The WhatsApp bridge

WhatsApp has no official sending API for individuals. The workaround: a bridge that poses as a linked device (like WhatsApp Web). I use whatsmeow, a Go library that speaks WhatsApp's multi-device protocol. I recompiled it directly on the server (it relies on SQLite through CGO, so native compilation), then linked it to the account with a QR code scanned once. It exposes a tiny local HTTP API: a POST /api/send with the number and the message, and off it goes.

Fun detail: the linking QR code normally shows up in a terminal as block characters. I re-rendered it as a real PNG so I could scan it cleanly off the screen.

2. The notifier

A Python script with zero dependencies (just the standard library). Each time it wakes up, it queries ESPN's public API (free, no key) to fetch the matches and their scores, spots the ones that just ended, writes a clean message (flags, team names in French, result) and sends it to Dim through the bridge. A state file keeps track of matches already sent: no duplicates, even if the script runs a hundred times.

3. Scheduling, synced to the fixtures

The rookie trap would be to check scores every 5 minutes, around the clock. Pointless: the kick-off times are known in advance. The script fetches the fixtures once a day, then only checks scores inside each match's real end window (from kick-off + 1h45 to + 3h30, to cover stoppage time, extra time and penalties). Outside those windows, it exits in a few milliseconds without a single network call.

Everything is driven by systemd: a service for the bridge (restarted automatically, starts at boot) and a timer for the notifier. If the server reboots, everything comes back on its own.

What's clever (and what isn't)

• Clever: the end-of-match window. It follows the real fixtures, so no polling loop and no waste. Robust to extra time.
• Clever: zero dependencies, zero paid API, zero secret key. ESPN is free and open, whatsmeow is open source, Python and systemd are already there.
• Owned: it's an unofficial WhatsApp bridge. It works very well, but if the phone stays offline for more than two weeks, the linked device logs out and you have to scan again. Over a month of World Cup, no problem.