New Feature / Update: AI Tasks (Home Assistant 2025.8)
I’m writing this like I’m talkin’ to a mate who wants their life a little lighter , less fiddling with automations, more time for morning breath and coffee. Home Assistant’s August 2025 release adds a feature called AI Tasks. It’s a way to hand off routine jobs inside your smart home platform to an AI and get back structured results you can act on, without building complex automations by hand.
What is it?
→ In plain terms, AI Tasks lets you type or speak a request to Home Assistant and the system uses AI to perform multi-step operations and return a tidy result that other automations can use. Think of it as delegating a small project to the house brain: summarise recent doorbell events, create a shopping list from low-stock items, or decide which lights should dim for movie night, then hand those outcomes back into flows you’ve already got running. This was published in the Home Assistant 2025.8 release notes on 6 August 2025 and called out as the foundation for new AI capabilities in the platform.[5]
Why does it matter?
→ Practical value, no fluff. Here are real use cases that save time and mental load:
- Synchronising inventory with Shopify: Instead of manually checking sensors or spreadsheets, you can ask AI Tasks to scan inventory readings from Home Assistant sensors, compile low-stock SKUs, and return a structured list that a Zapier or a custom automation posts to Shopify or Notion for reorder planning. This removes copy paste and late-night inventory hunts.
- Auto-summarising call transcripts or meeting notes: Record a client call on your phone, upload the transcript to a folder Home Assistant can read, then call an AI Task to extract action items and deadlines. The task returns a list of actions that can automatically create calendar events or reminders in Google Calendar or Todoist.
- Generating campaign briefs from home office activity: Ask AI Tasks to combine recent project notes, calendar events, and a few prompt sentences to produce a short campaign brief you can copy into Jasper or Writesonic, or paste straight into a Slack channel for the team.
- Better everyday automations: Instead of a dozen rules to handle guests, you can ask the AI to evaluate current presence, evening schedule, and lighting scenes then return the correct scene and a small set of commands for the lighting nodes. The automation that invoked the AI Task then runs those exact commands.
How it fits into a real workflow
I tried to think about a Tuesday morning where you’re juggling inventory, a marketing brief and a customer call. Instead of hopping between Shopify, Notion, your inbox and a bunch of automations, you open Home Assistant, dictate “Generate low-stock list for SKU tags kitchen and pantry, and create reorder reminders for items under 5,” the AI Task returns a structured list with SKU, qty and suggested reorder amount, and your automation pushes that to Shopify and Slack. Quick. Quiet. Done. I actually voice-typed that sentence into my notes while making breakfast and pasted it here, because that’s the point , less friction in the small chores.
Key facts from the release notes
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | Home Assistant 2025.8 (published 6 August 2025) |
| Feature | AI Tasks , foundation for delegating tasks to AI and receiving structured results |
| Notable extras | Text-to-speech streaming, improved group controls, integrations and more AI hooks in the platform |
What you should try first
- Make a simple AI Task that reads a sensor group for pantry items and returns a low-stock list.
- Wire that output to a notification or Slack message so you can see the structured result before automating reorders.
- If you run a home office, try auto-summarising a meeting transcript and have the task create calendar reminders for the actions.
Final note: this ain’t a magic switch that replaces thought. It’s a helper that cuts the small, repetitive stuff out of your day so you can focus on the work that needs your head and heart. If you care about fewer taps and clearer results, give AI Tasks a go and keep the outputs simple and auditable at first.
