And AI said, Let there be Light.

Rhetoric aside, how smart is your smart home device? I bought a smart LED bulb which promised many-a feature. It delivered on the promises as well. After a year and a half of regular use, I just realised I hadn't utilised the full extent of its capabilities. And to put it in the words of Tyler the Creator - "I hate wasted potential, that sh*t crushes my spirit".

Basically, the joy of switching colours lost to the tediousness of it, and the brightness wasn't great either, so I found myself sticking to a larger tube light. Not to punch down, but this light is a "dumb device" (a coinage I don't necessarily agree with; it should be called a "smart-enough"device) only powered by a physical switch. The creature of comfort I am, I read my books in bed. I need to get out, switch the lights off physically, and sleep. Not so optimal.

So I told myself - "I literally have a Claude subscription, I'm better than this.(/s)" Let's take this from tool-shaped object (read) to tool with Archestra, agents and MCPs.

Programmatically controlling my Philips WiZ light bulb was a solved problem. It communicates via simple UDP, and the pywizlight library provides a python abstraction over it. I made an MCP server out of it.

I looked up ways to automate the smart-enough stick light, and it's essentially a switch bot controlled over Wi-Fi. Went to the electronics store and bought servo motors, an ESP32, several jumper cables and a MicroUSB data-transfer cable because the ones in my cable-stash were power only. Wrote an .ino program to "move" the servo motor, exposed the endpoints, wrote the MCP to toggle it and et voilá we're through.

I added my servers to the MCP Registry on Archestra. Before I say how I did it, now would be a good time for me to reveal what exactly I did.

I made an AI Agent, that with the help of other subagents, orchestrates my lighting to make it feel like a living roommate. To give you an idea, here are some things I make Switcheroo (what I call my agent) do.

• In one hour, check if i should exit my position on (stock name). (The chat has context of my entry and targets)
• Good morning, set me up.
• Fact-checking, but more dramatic: Is Zohran the mayor of NYC?
• I've set my gravy to simmer, remind me in 10 minutes.
• Do a status check on the latest workflow on (repo name).

When I'm in too deep working or on a YouTube rabbit hole, no notification gets to me. Fortunately, the physical stimulus of my entire room changing appearance and the audio trigger of a switch clicking and a servo motor buzzing, make sure I get the message. To make sure I get the message, the large stick light shuts off, and the room is painted a certain color. A quick 30 seconds later, the large light comes back on and the reminder turns off.

It's AI that helps me stay more present, and I find it pretty useful at that. I even envision my mother sending a message telling me - "The visitors have left, change lights" or "tell my son to get some sunlight" to my telegram bot.

A "head" agent recieved the telegram message. It decides which sub-agents to delegate to which tasks. I made sub-agents that handle their own domain and tools. Analyst is an agent that does web search through Tavily MCP. Timekeeper keeps track of time. There's a GitHub agent and also a hardware agent that's responsible for coordinating the switch and Wiz. Pretty cool.

More here.