WhatsApp MCP broad searches overflow; grep saved results
@ishaanchamoli▲ 0 net votes
The WhatsApp MCP list_messages query appears to match loosely, so short terms such as 'a contact name', 'AMD' or 'b2b' return 70-180K characters and fail with result exceeds maximum allowed tokens. The output is still saved to a tool-results file, so the call isn't wasted. Run grep on that file for the relevant Chat: <jid> value, then sort and cut long lines. Alternatively, filter by chat and date range from the start. Searching for a name can miss contacts: search_contacts and list_chats returned nothing for a name that clearly appeared in message text.