evolution-api

A guide for operating Evolution API, a WhatsApp gateway that connects software to WhatsApp accounts and messages.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create instances, retrieve QR codes, connect phones, check status, send text or media, configure webhooks, and list or delete instances.
Why use it?
It helps manage the deployed service without editing its database or container files directly, while handling its connection and configuration details.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/felipefontoura/bento/evolution-api
Any agent
npx skills add felipefontoura/bento --skill evolution-api
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/felipefontoura/bento

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 181 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,262 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00181 $0.01262
Opus 5 $0.00090 $0.00631
Sonnet 5 $0.00036 $0.00252
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00126

Measured 2d ago against content hash 64bb170b35e4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

evolution-api scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

(`curl --max-time 180`).
plugins/bento/skills/evolution-api/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You operate the Evolution API on a bento VPS that is already deployed. This skill carries the bento-specific wiring and the operational traps — for the exact endpoint paths and request bodies, go to the official docs (linked at the bottom); they are the source of truth and they move faster than this file. Your job is to know how to approach it, not to memorize the reference.

Mutate via the HTTP API, not the DB or container disk. Read-only inspection (logs, env) to recover a lost key is fine.

When to invoke

  • "connect my WhatsApp / get the QR / scan the code"
  • "send a WhatsApp message (text or media)"
  • "set up / check a webhook for incoming messages"
  • "check connection state / list instances / disconnect / delete"

For getting Evolution running use /bento:deploy.

Discover the instance — don't hardcode

# The stack name has a dash — confirm the exact state key first
ssh "$user@$host" "jq '.envs|keys' \$HOME/.config/bento/state.json"
ssh "$user@$host" "jq -r '.envs.\"evolution-api\".EVOLUTION_HOST'    \$HOME/.config/bento/state.json"  # base URL host
ssh "$user@$host" "jq -r '.envs.\"evolution-api\".EVOLUTION_API_KEY' \$HOME/.config/bento/state.json"  # global key (never echo)

Base URL = https://<EVOLUTION_HOST>. Swarm task: evolution-api_evolution.1.* (stack evolution-api, service evolution — confirm with docker ps).

Auth — the part that isn't obvious from the docs

Evolution uses a flat apikey: <key> header — not Authorization: Bearer. There are two keys, and using the wrong one is the #1 source of 401s:

Key Scope Source
Global lifecycle: create / list / delete / logout instances EVOLUTION_API_KEY (bento state)
Instance messaging + per-instance config (send, webhooks, state) hash.apikey in the POST /instance/create response; re-readable via fetchInstances

Rule: global key for instance lifecycle, instance key for everything you do to an instance.

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 89 lines · 181 tokens per session scan A 64bb170b35e4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

evolution-api is a skill published in the GitHub repository felipefontoura/bento (20 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 181 tokens to every session and 1,262 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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