Detecting human presence in a WhatsApp chat to pause a chatbot

[txaviers]

I'm developing a WhatsApp chatbot in Python and want to implement a human handover feature. The goal is to temporarily pause the bot's automated responses when a human administrator opens the chat to read it (either on their phone or WhatsApp Web).

My intended logic would be:

1. An user is interacting with the bot.
2. A human admin opens that specific chat to read the conversation. This event should pause the bot.
3. If the admin sends a message, the bot remains inactive, signaling a full handover.
4. However, if the admin simply reads the chat and closes it without sending a message, the bot should automatically resume its activity.

I have reviewed the Waha documentation but could not find a specific webhook event or flag that indicates when a user (the admin) has opened a chat for reading. Is there a known strategy capable of detecting this kind of "presence" or "chat open" state? Any guidance or alternative approaches would be greatly appreciated.

[devlikepro]

Try checking message.ack and presence.update - ack is likely what you want if your bot doesn't mark the messages as read

[devlikepro]

https://waha.devlike.pro/docs/how-to/events/