Deploy on Render

Render can run Asena for free. Render's free services have no disk that survives a restart, so the bot keeps its login and settings on the Asena server with a session ID, and they come back after every restart.

What you need

• A WhatsApp number for the bot
• A free Render account
• An Asena account at app.asena.fun (sign in with GitHub or Google)

1. Create the bot and link WhatsApp

1. Open app.asena.fun and choose New bot. Give it a name.
2. Scan the QR code with the bot's phone (WhatsApp → Settings → Linked devices → Link a device), or use a pairing code.
3. Copy the session ID. It is shown only once.

You can also pair on asena.fun/pair without an account and import the session ID into the dashboard later.

2. Deploy

Click Deploy to Render in the dashboard, or open:

https://render.com/deploy?repo=https://github.com/shellhaki/asena

Render reads render.yaml from the repository and asks for:

Setting	Value
SESSION_ID	The ID from step 1
OWNER_NUMBER	Your number with country code, no +, e.g. 2348012345678

Render builds the Docker image (Debian with Bun, Node.js and FFmpeg) and starts the bot. Voice calls (#remind call, #gcall) work there too: the call audio runs in a small Node.js helper the bot starts by itself. In the logs you should see:

✓ Session loaded from the Asena server
✓ Connected to WhatsApp

Prefer to set it up by hand? Create a Web Service from your fork, choose Docker, set the health check path to /health, and add the two environment variables.

3. Keep it awake

A free web service goes to sleep after 15 minutes without HTTP traffic. A sleeping bot does not answer WhatsApp.

The bot answers on /health at its Render URL (Render sets PORT and RENDER_EXTERNAL_URL, and the bot reports that URL to the dashboard). In the dashboard, open the bot and click Add, every 10 min under Keep-alive jobs. The Asena server then opens https://<your-service>.onrender.com/health every 10 minutes.

The small bars under a job show its last 30 runs. A red bar means the ping failed or timed out; Render can take up to a minute to wake a service, so an occasional red bar right after a deploy is normal.

Free instance hours are limited per month. One bot kept awake all month fits; several may not. A paid instance never sleeps, so it needs no keep-alive job.

Restarts and redeploys

Every restart, redeploy or wake-up starts with an empty disk. The bot downloads its encrypted session, works on a local copy, and uploads changes every 20 seconds and when Render stops it. Notes, settings and the WhatsApp login all survive.

During a deploy Render briefly runs the old and new copy together. The new copy takes over the session and the old one stops by itself.

If WhatsApp logs the bot out

If someone removes the device under Linked devices, the bot stops and prints:

WhatsApp logged this session out (unlinked from the phone).
   Open https://app.asena.fun, choose Refresh session, and put the new SESSION_ID in your settings.

1. In the dashboard, open the bot and click Refresh session. Link WhatsApp again.
2. In Render, open the service → Environment, replace SESSION_ID with the new ID, and save. Render restarts the bot.

The bot keeps its name, metrics history and keep-alive jobs. Settings stored by the old session (notes, group settings) start fresh, because they were encrypted with the old ID.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
Deploy fails health check	Check the logs for Startup failed. A wrong or revoked SESSION_ID stops the bot before it listens.
"This session was replaced by a newer one"	You refreshed the session. Put the new ID in Render.
Bot answers late or not at all	It was asleep. Add a keep-alive job, or check that the job's bars are green.
"This session is running on another machine" in a loop	Two services use the same SESSION_ID. Delete one, or give each bot its own session.