Building custom Web Messaging UI with WebSocket Guest API

Tired of the default widget styling. Trying to build a custom chat interface using the raw WebSocket connection to the Guest API. I can establish the connection and send the init message, but the send message isn’t triggering a response from the server.

ws.send(JSON.stringify({
 type: 'send',
 data: {
 message: 'Test message',
 timestamp: Date.now()
 }
}));

The connection stays open, no errors in the console, but nothing appears in the Genesys Cloud transcript. Is there a specific sequence I’m missing after init?