# \[APP\]\[Pro\] Cortex AI – an AI brain for your Flows and your home

**URL:** <https://community.homey.app/t/app-pro-cortex-ai-an-ai-brain-for-your-flows-and-your-home/161087>\
**Category:** Apps\
**Created:** [October 19, 2026, 8:03pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/app-pro-cortex-ai-an-ai-brain-for-your-flows-and-your-home/161087 "2026-10-19T20:03:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![Goossens](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/goossens/32/172342_2.png) [@Goossens](https://community.homey.app/u/Goossens)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2026, 9:43pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/app-pro-cortex-ai-an-ai-brain-for-your-flows-and-your-home/161087/2 "2026-10-28T21:43:24Z")

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## Tutorial: let Cortex decide whether to water the garden

My own setup: a Gardena water control with two valves and a soil moisture sensor. Instead of stacking conditions (moisture below X, no rain coming, not too cold…), I let Cortex make the call and keep the Flow small.

 ![What the Garden brain sees, and what Cortex answers](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/6/c/6c8f32e56becaa792e6e0b6c6a2ef750704591e4.png)

**1. Make a brain “Garden”**  
Devices → + → Cortex AI → Brain. Tick the soil sensor and the water control. In the brain’s settings keep _Weather_ and _Sunrise and sunset_ on, and put your own rules in _House rules_, for example:

> Water when the soil moisture is below 40 %. Skip when rain is expected in the next 12 hours or when it’s colder than 5 °C.

Tip: on the Cortex AI settings page, “What does it see?” shows exactly the text the AI model gets.

**2. Build the Flow**

 ![The Flow: three cards](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/6/a/6ab246974756598867222e0843b4dd56404ba5c7.png)

- **When:** every day at 07:00
- **And:** _Cortex answers yes_ to “Should the garden be watered this morning?”, on the Garden brain. Set _otherwise_ to **no** : if the model is slow or offline, the garden simply isn’t watered that morning.
- **Then:** open the valve for 20 minutes. _Else:_ a notification, if you like.

**3. See why it decided**  
Every question, answer and reason is in the Cortex AI settings under _Log_. The picture above is a real answer from my brain this evening.

**Good to know**

- It works the same with a local model (Ollama, LM Studio) if you don’t want a cloud key.
- Cortex gets the weather forecast, not the rain that already fell. The soil sensor covers that part.
- A question like this costs a fraction of a cent with the small OpenAI or Gemini models, and you can set a daily budget.

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_[View the full topic](https://community.homey.app/t/app-pro-cortex-ai-an-ai-brain-for-your-flows-and-your-home/161087)._