Load Evolution API data to DuckDB

Evolution API is an open-source platform for WhatsApp integration and multi-channel messaging management. Everything needed to build a working Evolution API → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your Evolution API to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from Evolution API to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the Evolution API API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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Evolution API API at a glance

These values come from the Evolution API API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the Evolution API API?

Authentication is performed by passing a global API key or an instance-specific token in the 'apikey' HTTP header. Every request must include this header to be authorized.

1. Get your credentials

Evolution API authentication is managed through environment variables rather than a traditional web-based dashboard for key generation. To obtain or set your API credentials: 1. Locate the .env file in your Evolution API project root directory. 2. If it does not exist, copy it from the provided .env.example file. 3. Find the AUTHENTICATION_API_KEY variable. 4. Set this to a strong, randomly generated string of your choice. 5. Save the file and restart the Evolution API service for the changes to take effect. This global key serves as the master credential for all administrative operations and instances.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.evolution_api_source]
evolution_api_key = "your_secure_random_api_key_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What Evolution API data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the Evolution API endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new Evolution API records?

The Evolution API API reference does not document a timestamp or sequence field for these endpoints, so there is nothing to advertise here as verified. Pick a field from the endpoints table above that increases with every write, then set it as the cursor_path.

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{"name": "chat_messages", "endpoint": {
    "path": "chat/findMessages/{instanceName}",
    # Replace with a field that increases on every write.
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "REPLACE_ME", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated Evolution API pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading /instance/create and /instance/fetchInstances from the Evolution API API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def evolution_api_source(apikey=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "The base URL is user-defined and configured via the SERVER_URL environment variable (e.g., https://api.yourdomain.com or https://api.evolution-api.com).",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": apikey, "name": "apikey", "location": "header"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "chat_messages", "endpoint": {"path": "chat/findMessages/{instanceName}", "data_selector": "messages.records"}},
            {"name": "instances", "endpoint": {"path": "instance/fetchInstances"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_evolution_api_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="evolution_api_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="evolution_api_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(evolution_api_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_evolution_api_to_duckdb()

Run it with python evolution_api_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query Evolution API data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("evolution_api_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.chat_messages.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM evolution_api_data.chat_messages LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the Evolution API to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw Evolution API loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load Evolution API data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack