Comment by fudged71
2 days ago
I think/hope the whole "home manager" category is going to take off soon.
On a cost basis, it no longer makes sense--practically--not to use visual/text/audio intelligence to manage such a large asset. We just don't have the user-friendly mass-market interfaces for it just yet.
It's possible to scan every manual, every insurance policy, ingest every local bylaw. It's possible to take a video of your home and transform it into a semantically segmented Gsplat of [nearly] everything you own. It's possible to do sensor fusion of all the outward facing cameras from your home. And obviously agents like OpenClaw can decide what to do with all of this (inventory, security, optimization, etc).
We've been building https://homechart.app for years (without GenAI...) and folks just don't realize that home managers exist as an app. They're too used to single purpose solutions, so they don't think to look for more comprehensive options.
There's also the inherit struggle of being everything for everyone with an app like this, and focusing on features 80% of your users want and leaving the other 20% niche features on the backlog upsets people, mostly the power users.
I checked out HomeChart, and boy howdy it feels like its doing way too much.
Thank you for ironically proving my point, I guess. The main value add here is everything is integrated into one app. I always wonder if folks said the same thing when Salesforce or SAP were created.
Anyways we document our reasoning here: https://homechart.app/docs/explanations/architecture/#separa...
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It's just hard sell vs the free of just having a spreadsheet
I've been working on something like this the last few months specifically around service quote analysis (repairs, construction, hvac, auto, etc.) and it's really cool. I think LLM analysis is the way to go because the amount of complexity is absolutely staggering - just to start the difference in quality and information available on a quote is drastically different between vendors within the SAME vertical. Then to do actual do analysis on local laws, the details of your property (not just photos/videos, but zoning and lot details), vendor analysis, etc.
On top of it all, the most important thing to consider is intent -> An emergency plumbing visit is often very different than a proactive upgrade.
edit: spelling
This is in line with my thinking, can you say more about how intent changes how you would use a system like this?
I had a really complex negotiation for car repairs (goodwill warranty, balancing a long list of repairs/recalls etc) which was pretty time sensitive. If I had already had my service record in a structured format along with the manufacturer's policies I feel like I could have responded with better preparation. Same for any other big maintenance items on the house, mortgage, insurance, etc.
And then there's the flip side--what do my policies and healthcare/loyalty plans cover that I'm not taking advantage of? What can be combined towards my goals etc.
For my initial system I'm not building full historical service history, insurance policies, etc. because it's a serious amount of scope on top of the core value prop, which is point-in-time "is this a good quote?". When I eventually do this, I'd need to do it proper with LLM + RAG, etc.
I do have the concept of an "asset" which could be a car, house, etc. and with enough basic info it's pretty easy for the LLM to cross reference common problems, or at least suggest questions that you should follow up on.
I'm leaving intent pretty free-form for now, the most friction I'm willing to add is 2 things:
- Basic enum preferences around budget and flexibility to help with prompting
- A claude code style "a few questions" follow up
Any additional form friction I think gets too complex.
It's funny, a lot of my research has been from subreddits for auto, homeownership, questions for people who work in trades, etc. Every time someone asks "is this quote fair", the response from the experts is almost always "But what do you want"
So in a time-sensitive repairs scenario, intent could "What get's my car safe to drive again for daily commute.... or for a long roadtrip". The output analysis could recommend which fixes are highest priority, where work could be split up, delayed etc.
how do you handle the LLM hallucinations in analysis? I like it for data extraction but i never trust it to analyze anything
First, I've spent a ton of time becoming opinionated about a normalized data model that supports the product experience I'm trying to build. This applies both to the extraction (line items, warranty sections, vendors, etc.) and the analysis portion. The latter is imperfect, but aligns philosophically with what I'm willing to stand behind. For example
- building outputs for price fairness (based on publicly available labor data)
- scope match (is vendor over/under scoping user's intent)
- risk (vendor risk, timeline, price variability, etc.)
- value (some combination of price, service, longevity, etc.)
I don't get much hallucinations in my testing, but overall it's pretty complex pipeline since it is broken down into so many steps.
I’ve built https://manor.app with the intention of it fitting the “user-friendly mass-market interface” you suggest. It’s essentially a “second brain” app for your home(s), covering inventory, documents, tasks/reminders, notes, etc. The inspiration is tools like Asana, Linear, etc I used in my career as a software engineer, tailored for the home.
It’s my sole area of focus, with more document retrieval and analysis (and UI polish) on the way.
> It's possible to do sensor fusion of all the outward facing cameras from your home
Is that legal though? I'm guessing it the US it might be, given the amount of cameras of public places you can see in various communities, but wonder how common that is. Where I live (Spain) it's not legal to just stick a camera on your house and record public places, you need to put the camera in a way so you're only filming your private property or similar.
I've got several cameras outside my house, but these recording 24/7 are adjusted to capture my property only (garden, front drive, entrances etc)
That's legal.
If someone gets recorded that's because they left the public land and entered mine.
> That's legal.
That makes sense, you're not actually recording public spaces, that'd be legal here too. "all the outward facing cameras from your home" makes it sound like that's including public spaces though, but maybe I'm just reading it too strictly.
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The US gives you no expectation of privacy in public places and private property is generally do what you want. It gets murkier if your cameras are pointed at other private property (your neighbors).
Not a legal expert just what I’ve heard.
As I understand it (which probably isn’t well), expectation of privacy on private spaces in the US gets pretty wonky. Like being in plain view on a front lawn wouldn’t have expectation of privacy but being behind a fence would even if the fence doesn’t do a good job of blocking sight lines.
I call this the "Home Resource Planner"
Bricks are there (Home assistant, Frigate, Pihole,...)
Grocey
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