The House Assistant

The house has an assistant of its own. It lives on our own hardware, chats with us in a private family message thread, sends a morning briefing, keeps the inbox down to the mail that actually needs a person, and can dig up a family photo when someone asks for one. Once a week it reads over how the house's systems are doing and writes a short, plain-English report.

It started small, as a way to get the right heads-up at the right time, and grew into the house's general helper. The rule from day one: the assistant only gets small, specific tools, the code decides who hears what, and every new job runs silently for a while before it's allowed to speak up.

Highlights

• A morning briefing and a weekly house check-up, written for people rather than dashboards
• Inbox triage that learns what matters to us and files the rest
• Ask for a family photo in the chat and it finds one
• Runs at home, with narrow, typed tools and firm caps so it can't run away with itself
• Anything new starts in a quiet shadow mode and earns its way to live