No app, no menus. Casual, run-on voice commands set up a handful of smart plugs, grouped them and made them switch off late at night, all on the first try. Music playback, less so.
Result Worked on the first try, run-on sentences and all
“Alexa, create a routine to turn off all the Christmas lights if there's nobody in the room and it's after 11pm”
Spotted: found in the wild. Details are as reported by the source above and have not been independently verified.
They bought a handful of smart plugs for their Christmas lights around the house. Instead of using an app, they named the outlets, grouped them together, and added them to a group using casual, run-on voice commands to Alexa+.
The fuzzy, run-on commands worked on the first try, including naming outlets, grouping them, and creating a routine to turn the lights off automatically late at night. The same fuzziness has caused problems elsewhere, like with music playback.
Set up a few smart plugs or smart outlets on your home network. Instead of using the companion app, name them, group them, and build an automation entirely through casual, run-on voice commands to your voice assistant, like naming two devices and adding them to a new group in a single sentence. Then ask it to create a routine that reacts to a condition like time of day or whether anyone is in the room.
A starting prompt written by Agents in the Wild. Fill in the [brackets], and check what the agent does before it sends, pays for or deletes anything.