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LINQ CLI

an iMessage API you can use from the command line

Details

External ID
48313364
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
LINQ CLI
Website domain
linqapp.com
Launched
May 28, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
8
Upvotes percentile
0.4894991922455573
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hey my name is Patrick, I’m a co-founder and CTO of Linq. We’re an API for sending and receiving iMessages (it does RCS/SMS too). It can do everything you can manually in iMessage (typing indicators, reactions, delivery emphasis, FindMy etc.) Our main customers are companies building conversational agents but we’re wanting to make it easier for developers to get started for free.To do that we built a CLI that lets you manage up to 20 contacts and gives you full API access for free. I’d love your feedback so we can keep improving it. Install via npm using: npm install -g @linqapp/cliRecently, I used the CLI to connect my Claude bot to WeWork & iMessage and haven’t had to use the WeWork app in a few weeks to book rooms.Github: https://github.com/linq-team/linq-cli Landing page: https://linqapp.com/cliThree constraints you should know about: 1. The free tier requires inbound-first (ie someone must text you before you text them) and has a limit of 20 contacts. This is to avoid spam. 2. The line is shared. This means a few other people will be using the same phone number as you, none of our paid production lines work this way. If you're testing enterprise grade our sandbox mirrors production, but has a 7 day time limit. The CLI is shared because there is a real infrastructure cost to us and we want to give this away for free. 3. We require an email to sign up. To avoid spam + our infrastructure cost.To be precise about "open source", it's the CLI. The whole client is in that repo, so you can read exactly what leaves your machine. The backend that delivers messages is closed.

Enrichment

Theme
niche social and community platforms
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Dev tools
Audience
Developer
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
imessage api for command line
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

No Apple does not provide an iMessage API; building a programmatic service requires reverse-engineering Apple's proprietary push protocols or operating large-scale physical Apple hardware farms.

What it would actually take: The backend requires either reverse-engineering Apple's proprietary APNs and IDS cryptographic protocols (handling fair-play authentication, push tokens, and end-to-end encryption) or running high-density physical Mac mini farms with automated Apple ID lifecycle management. Layered on top is enterprise CPaaS infrastructure to handle carrier-grade RCS/SMS routing, anti-fraud rate limiting, and SOC 2 security controls.

Discussion

5 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: LINQ

Concerns raised: Steep setup fees and high minimum costs ($250/month), Business-only pricing, not available for personal use, CLI approach less practical than OpenAPI spec integration

Feature requests: SMS/text messaging capability

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 46 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #19 of 47 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 156 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.