Feature request: expose Baileys' `addOrEditContact` / `removeContact` (write a contact's name)

[biancastronco]

🎯 Problem Statement

There is no endpoint to WRITE a contact. POST /chat/findContacts/{instance} reads them, and POST /chat/updateProfileName/{instance} changes the connected account's OWN profile name — neither can set the name of another contact.

Checked on our instance (Baileys connection): POST to /chat/updateContact/{instance}, /chat/upsertContact/{instance}, /chat/updateContactName/{instance} and /chat/saveContact/{instance} all return 404. The route list in src/api/routes/chat.router.ts on main confirms it: 23 routes, none of them a contact write. (The "Update Contact" endpoint in the docs belongs to the EvoAI CRM service, a different product that does not touch the WhatsApp instance.)

The result is that any CRM or inbox built on Evolution has a one-way name: the address book and push names flow from the device into the application (CONTACTS_UPSERT / CONTACTS_UPDATE), but a name corrected inside the application can never reach the user's own WhatsApp.

This is not a limitation of WhatsApp. WhatsApp Web renames a contact without touching the phone's address book, because WhatsApp keeps a server-side contact list per account that syncs to every linked device.

💡 Proposed Solution

Expose what Baileys already implements in src/Socket/chats.ts:

const addOrEditContact = (jid, contact) => chatModify({ contact }, jid)
const removeContact = (jid) => chatModify({ contact: null }, jid)

It is an app-state patch (contactAction), so it propagates to all linked devices. The proto message is:

message ContactAction {
optional string fullName = 1;
optional string firstName = 2;
optional string lidJid = 3;
optional bool saveOnPrimaryAddressbook = 4;
optional string pnJid = 5;
optional string username = 6;
}

Note saveOnPrimaryAddressbook: the protocol itself distinguishes "save in WhatsApp's own contact list" from "save in the device's address book".

Suggested API:

POST /chat/updateContact/{instance}
{
"number": "5546999103009",
"fullName": "Ricardo Cavalcante | Ortopedista",
"firstName": "Ricardo",
"saveOnPrimaryAddressbook": false
}

POST /chat/removeContact/{instance}
{ "number": "5546999103009" }

Implementation sketch:

1. src/api/dto/chat.dto.ts — UpdateContactDto { number?, remoteJid?, fullName, firstName?, saveOnPrimaryAddressbook? }
2. src/api/routes/chat.router.ts — router.post('/updateContact') (+ removeContact), with the usual routerPath / dataValidate / schema pair.
3. whatsapp.baileys.service.ts:

public async updateContact(data: UpdateContactDto) {
const jid = createJid(data.number ?? data.remoteJid)
await this.client.addOrEditContact(jid, {
fullName: data.fullName,
firstName: data.firstName ?? data.fullName,
saveOnPrimaryAddressbook: data.saveOnPrimaryAddressbook ?? false,
})
// keep the local cache consistent, otherwise findContacts keeps returning the old name
await this.prismaRepository.contact.updateMany({
where: { instanceId: this.instanceId, remoteJid: jid },
data: { pushName: data.fullName },
})
this.sendDataWebhook(Events.CONTACTS_UPDATE, [{ remoteJid: jid, pushName: data.fullName }])
return { update: 'success' }
}

4. whatsapp.business.service.ts (Cloud API) — throw BadRequestException: the official API has no contact list, so this is Baileys-only by nature.

Edge cases:

• Groups are out of scope: renaming a group is updateGroupSubject, which changes the subject for every participant.
• removeContact is destructive (it clears the name on the user's own devices), so it should be a separate endpoint and never an empty fullName falling through updateContact.
• Idempotent: sending the same name twice is a no-op patch.

Happy to open a PR if this shape looks right to you.

🔄 Alternatives Considered

• Probing for an undocumented route: the four plausible names return 404, and the router source confirms none exists.
• Keeping the name local only (what we ship today), with the UI stating explicitly that it does not reach the phone. It works, but it leaves the two sides permanently out of sync.
• The EvoAI CRM "Update Contact" endpoints: different product, edits CRM records, does not touch the WhatsApp instance.
• Running a patched fork of Evolution with this route: doable, but it means maintaining a custom image for one contact name.

📊 Priority

Low - Nice to have

🧩 Component

None

🎯 Use Case

We run an internal CRM/inbox on Evolution: our team answers WhatsApp from inside our own application, with the same number they use on their phones. People arrive from Click-to-WhatsApp ads with no name in the address book, and whoever answers types the real one ("Ricardo Cavalcante | Ortopedista").

Today that name lives only in our database. The same person on the operator's phone is still a bare number, so the phone and the application disagree about who the conversation belongs to — and the correction has to be made twice, by hand, in two places.

Our user put it plainly: "WhatsApp Web doesn't write to anyone's address book, and it renames contacts." She is right, and we had to tell her the bridge we use cannot do it.

📝 Additional Context

Evolution API v2.x, Baileys connection type, self-hosted (Docker).