on the 4e of June I received the email about the new ChatGPT integration: “Describe what you want to automate. ChatGPT helps you set it up.”
As an active Homey user, this got me really excited. In my opinion, the true value of AI in a smart home isn’t in simply turning a light on or off (we already use voice assistants or the app for that). The real game-changer would be designing, building, and migrating complex (Advanced) Flows. Think about automating repetitive tasks, eliminating old scripts, or batch-converting an outdated set of flows into a single, streamlined Advanced Flow. Essentially: “automation-as-code” using natural language.
Unfortunately, the reality is a huge letdown. The integration falls completely short on exactly this front.
When you actually put ChatGPT to work to build or restructure flows, the AI quickly pulls the handbrake. This is the harsh reality that ChatGPT itself outlines regarding its limitations:
No Advanced Flow graph editing: ChatGPT cannot create or manipulate visual nodes because flows are visual elements, not text-based configurations that the AI can push directly into Homey.
No bulk migrations: You can’t ask it: “I have these 10 remotes, please rebuild these flows more efficiently.”
Very limited generation: Only extremely basic flows with directly available cards can (sometimes) be generated. The moment any real logic is involved, it stops.
Instead of an AI engineer doing the heavy lifting for you, you essentially just get a “clickable text instruction” on your screen. In the end, you still have to manually drag, drop, and connect everything yourself in the Homey Web App. To make matters worse, even with simple commands, the AI struggles with device IDs and throws errors stating it cannot uniquely identify the devices in the session.
The marketing email paints a picture of lifting your smart home to the next level with a single click. But as long as ChatGPT cannot actually autonomously generate (Advanced) Flows, and we are still stuck manually dragging visual nodes around, this adds very little value for power users. Right now it feels like a neat gimmick, while the potential for true automation could have been so much more.
What are your thoughts on this? Have any of you tried letting it generate more complex logic, or are you hitting the exact same brick walls?
I think you’re missing the point. Suggesting Homey Scripts completely defeats the purpose of an AI assistant, and it’s definitely not what Athom advertised.
The email explicitly stated: “Describe what you want to automate. ChatGPT helps you set it up.” If the solution to a limited AI integration is “just write JavaScript instead,” then the integration fails its core promise.
If the current system is simply not capable enough to handle actual flow orchestration, and it should never have been marketed as a seamless, one-click automation builder.
That’s why I’m looking for fellow users that have the same issue, and hoping for homey to pick it up and work on it.
The primary issue is the GUI. It needs x and y coordinates for Advanced Flows, and the AI (at least Claude) doesn’t really understand the position of those cards.
Besides that, Homey can only load all Flow cards all at once. This means that every single Flowcard is loaded with all available options such as tokens it returns and title in all languages, which uses a lot of tokens so you’d need a model with a high context. Homey doesn’t have an option for “lazy loading” which most webapps use nowadays
If that is the issue, then Athom really needs to work on a solution for a problem they created themselves. My thinking here is simple: Homey has build there own API, so just get the data, hand it over to the AI efficiently, and let the AI handle the logic.
We shouldn’t have to worry about the system choking on too many options or getting confused by where to place blocks on a visual screen. That’s on Athom to solve on the backend.
Until they figure out how to bridge that gap properly, the integration just isn’t ready to do what they promised in the email and also their own support website:
But in order to do so, it needs to get all trigger, condition and action Flowcards. Also all devices need to be fetched, and if you want to modify an existing Flow you’d need to get all Flows as well. There’s not really an option to only get specific items, if an app (f.e. ChatGPT) needs something, it needs to fetch everything from the API. It can be thousands of lines of JSON. Homey’s API was never really designed for AI it seems like.
But isn’t that exactly what MCP is supposed to be for?
From what I understand, MCP should act as the filter for the massive data dump Homey is giving. At least, that should be the standard. Instead of forcing the AI to read thousands of lines of JSON all at once and choking the system, MCP is designed so the AI can just ask Homey for exactly what it needs at that moment.
Let’s be honest: Home Assistant wasn’t made to be used with AI either, just like most products out there. But in this day and age, everyone needs to adapt or stop.
Launching a marketing campaign for a “one-click ChatGPT integration” when the backend plumbing isn’t actually ready for it—at least, based on what you’re saying—is just disappointing. Half measures like this are not going to work, and they aren’t going to be accepted by users who pay for a premium product. If Athom is selling us on AI integration, they need to build the proper bridge to support it.
But again @smarthomesven, you’re just giving reasons why it isn’t working or won’t work. My goal here is to get in touch with other users who are trying to do the same as me—create flows and advanced flows with ChatGPT—and are failing. Or, even better, to get a response from Athom themselves so we can get a clear picture of the current state and what the future holds.
This is just a users forum.
To contact Athom, goto homey.app/support.
Not defending Athom in any way, but I don’t understand how you think it can do “magic”?
I’m not sure what you read, and where
It only says help you, Chatabcde can help you create.
I don’t read “it will do anything you had in mind” anywhere, but maybe it’s just me
Well, according to Athom, they do read and follow the community forums. What company wouldn’t if they want to know what’s actually going on with their users? And of course, I have already created a support ticket as well.
As for my expectations being “unrealistic”—this is exactly what I, and many others, expect when we read an email like that or a support page telling me:
I want to be able to ask ChatGPT: “I have a zone with one light and one remote. Make an Advanced Flow to turn the light on/off with the remote, and use a long press to dim or brighten the light.”
Of course, this is a simplified example, but these are exactly the types of flows that are a massive pain to set up manually for every single remote, room, zone, and mood in a large house.
There are so many personal flows I would love to spin up quickly—like a movie time scene, a sunset routine, or an away-from-home state. I am definitely not expecting magic. Just being able to generate these “basic” remote control flows, dimming behaviors, and mood shifts for a zone would make me, and a lot of other users, incredibly happy.
In fact, once those flows are built and pushed to my system, I wouldn’t even care about keeping ChatGPT connected to my home anymore. I just want it to do the heavy lifting of building the foundations.
