4.18.0 is in test: the whole app read through, and everything that turned up, built
One thing first: this version needs Homey firmware 12.1.0 or newer. The app now has a widget for Homey’s own dashboards, and Homey only allows widgets from that version on. On older firmware the update simply will not be offered.
Custom flow tools actually work now
If you built a flow with the card “AI agent calls a custom tool” and your assistant never saw the tool: that was the app, not you. Current firmware stores that card under a longer name than the app was looking for, so no flow ever became a tool. It does now. The tool also follows your flows without a restart: a new flow shows up as a tool within seconds, and the tool of a deleted flow goes away with it instead of claiming the flow ran.
A custom tool can now get a description, up to five typed arguments (they arrive in the flow as Argument 1 to 5) and a longer wait for its answer. Ask your assistant to use flow_tools_describe.
Zones and schedules
A room inside a floor counts. Every zone filter compared one id, so “turn everything off downstairs” did nothing when downstairs was a floor with rooms in it. Sub-zones are included now, and a group change tells you which rooms it covered.
Schedules take a clock time. “Every weekday at seven” is now a schedule of its own, recomputed against your home’s timezone, so it no longer slides an hour at every daylight-saving change the way an interval does.
Energy and system
Energy reports per day, week, month and year, your energy prices, the state of your Matter and Thread networks, how much each app uses, a backup on request, and installing an app. Installing counts as destructive, so it needs an API key and a confirmation.
Diagnostics
Search the log, filter it by key, and see median and slowest response times, eight days of counts and which tools fail most. How long the logs keep entries is a setting now. There is also a change history that records what something was changed from and to, and by which key. It stays off until you switch it on, because it keeps names and values.
Flow cards
New triggers for a scheduled job that fails and an assistant that disconnects. New conditions for whether an assistant is connected, which security event fired, and whether today’s model spend is below an amount. And two actions that limit the bridge to a lower access mode and restore it. A flow can never raise access above what you chose on the settings page, because an assistant can start flows.
The “AI controls a device” card now says which key and which way in did it, and group changes fire it too. The ask card returns what the question cost.
Dashboards
Every page has its own token. A dashboard page carries its token inside the page, and until now that token opened every dashboard. So a hallway tablet that only shows lights could, in principle, unlock the front door because another dashboard has the lock on it. Each page now gets a token that opens only that page, and only the controls on it. Pages that were open keep working until they reload.
Live, and honest about it. The security tab shows live statuses instead of an “all fine” filled in when the page was built. A value from a sensor that stopped reporting is dimmed with its last update, and a page that lost the bridge says since when.
New: logic variable cards, live charts, position sliders for covers, the outside temperature, flow tiles (behind an API key), and today’s model cost on the ask card and on the Bridge device. And a widget for Homey’s own dashboards with the bridge status.
Assistants
A long action reports progress to clients that can show it, and a request can be cancelled. One device, zone, variable or flow can be read by id instead of reading all of them. One client’s resource subscription no longer sends updates to every other client.
Watches go further than a capability: a device going offline, somebody arriving, leaving, falling asleep or waking up, and a logic variable changing.
And an assistant building a flow can look up the valid values of a card field that offers a list, such as which HomeyScript to run, instead of guessing.
What would help
Test version: MCP AI Bridge | Homey
Everything above was run on a real Homey. A few things I cannot check from here, and I would like to hear about them:
- A custom flow tool you built yourself. Especially if you had one that never showed up before.
- The widget on a Homey dashboard: whether it looks right on your screen.
- Model cost with your own prices filled in, on the ask card and the Bridge device.
- A sensor that goes quiet on the app’s dashboard: whether the dimming makes sense to you.
@weide43