Homatic.ai
Building automations
How to build a smart home automation, from a simple routine to one that checks its own work
Most smart home apps build automations the same way: pick a trigger, pick an action, save. That covers “turn the porch light on at sunset” perfectly. It runs out the moment the automation has to wait for something, try again, remember a value, or react to something that is not a device — which is exactly what running a rental, or just a busy house, keeps asking for.
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What we describe of the SmartThings app comes from Samsung’s own help pages and the SmartThings developer documentation as published in October 2026. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
A simple automation, built by hand
Take an ordinary rule: “When the front door opens after sunset, turn on the hallway light.” In the SmartThings app it is a routine, built screen by screen:
- StartFavorites → + → Create routineThe routine editor opens with two empty halves, If and Then.
- IfAdd the triggerTap + under If, choose the door’s contact sensor, choose “Open”.
- IfAdd the time limitTap + again, choose a time condition, set it to “after sunset”. To make it a hard requirement rather than another trigger, mark it as a precondition (“only if”).
- ThenAdd the actionTap + under Then, choose the hallway light, choose “On”. Optionally add “Delay this action” or a second action.
- FinishTest, name, save“Test routine actions”, give it a name and icon, and save.
For a rule this size, that is a good tool. Five steps, every choice visible, nothing hidden. SmartThings also lets a condition require a state to hold for a while (“stays open for 5 minutes”), and lets an action wait before it runs.
The toggle version
Many rental tools skip the editor entirely and offer a list of switches: “Lock the door at checkout — on.” “Heat on 2 hours before check-in — on.” Each one is a fixed recipe with an offset you can adjust. That is even faster to set up, and it is exactly as flexible as the list of toggles someone else decided to build. If the behavior you need is not a toggle, there is no way to describe it.
Where a trigger and an action stop being enough
Both approaches share one shape: something happens, then something is done, once. Here is what that shape cannot say, in the SmartThings Routines editor or in a list of toggles:
| The automation needs to… | Trigger → action builders | Homatic |
|---|---|---|
| Start from a booking, not a clock or a device | Not a trigger in the SmartThings app; toggle tools offer fixed offsets only | Check-in, checkout and “while a guest is staying” are ordinary parts of a rule |
| Find out whether it worked, and try again | The command is sent once; nothing reads the device back | Retries on a schedule you set, up to the number of attempts you choose |
| Tell you only when it gave up | A notification fires every time the routine runs, or never | An alert that runs once, only after the attempts are spent |
| Remember a value and put it back | No memory between runs | Saves the thermostat’s setpoint, restores it exactly once when the situation ends |
| Count events (“opened 6 times in 30 minutes”) | Not expressible | A condition can count how often something happened in a window |
| Compare two readings (“5° warmer than it is set to”) | Each condition compares to a number you type | A condition can compare one reading to another, plus an offset |
| React to a broken connection | Not documented as a routine condition | “If a connection stops working, text me” is a rule |
To be fair to SmartThings: its developer-only Rules API, written as JSON, can express more than the app’s editor, and community tools built on it go further still. Each step up asks you to write and maintain code.
Describe your own rule in a sentence → Homatic writes it, checks every step against the devices that property actually has, and shows you the rule before anything is saved.
How a complex automation is built in Homatic
You do not assemble it. You describe it, the way you would tell someone who looks after the place:
“Ten minutes after checkout, if the front door is unlocked or jammed, try to lock it 3 times a minute apart, and if it still is not locked, text and email me.”
- 1. DescribeType the sentenceOn the Automations page, in plain English. No menus to find, no order to build things in.
- 2. ReviewHomatic shows the rule it understoodTrigger, conditions and each step, against your devices — the lock it found, the attempts, the wait, who gets the alert. A step a device cannot perform is flagged, not saved quietly.
- 3. AdjustChange anything before savingEdit it in the form like any other rule. Nothing runs until you save it.
- 4. SaveIt runs from then onEvery run is logged with what each condition read at that moment, so “why did it do that?” has an answer.
Built by hand, that one sentence would need a checkout trigger, a ten-minute wait, a check of the lock, a retry loop with a counter, a stop condition, and an alert that runs only after the last attempt — then a way to keep it from running again when the cleaner opens the door that afternoon. In Homatic it is one rule.
Six automations that need more than a trigger and an action
Each of these is a single sentence you can type into Homatic. Each one uses something a trigger-and-action builder does not have.
1. Lock up after checkout, and tell me only if it fails
“10 minutes after checkout, if the door is unlocked or jammed, try to lock it 3 times a minute apart; if it still isn’t locked, text me.”
Uses: a booking as the trigger, a wait, retries with a limit, and an alert that runs once after the last attempt. It also runs once per vacancy, so the cleaner opening the door later does not start it again. Where the lock reports it, a deadbolt that stalls against the strike plate shows as jammed, not as an ordinary unlocked door.
2. Hold the AC while a window is open, then put it back
“If any window or door is open for 5 minutes while the AC is cooling, remember the setpoint and set it to 78; keep it at 78 while anything is open; put the original back when they all close.”
Uses: remembering a value, holding a setting against someone changing it, and restoring the original exactly once when the last window closes. Homatic builds this as two rules: one that remembers, sets 78 and restores, and one that only re-applies 78 while something is open. Built as a separate “restore when all closed” rule, the restore would fire every time anyone shut a door, overriding whatever the guest had chosen.
3. Know when the AC cannot keep up
“Tell me if it’s more than 5 degrees warmer inside than the thermostat is set to, for half an hour.”
Uses: comparing one reading to another rather than to a fixed number. A room at 76°F is fine with the AC set to 74 and a failing compressor when it is set to 68, and no single threshold you type can tell those apart. It notifies rather than acts: a struggling system is something a person should look at.
4. Spot a party before the neighbors do
“Late at night during a stay, if the noise is above 70 dB and the front door has opened more than 6 times in half an hour, text me.”
Uses: counting events in a time window, a time-of-night window, and “only while a guest is staying” from the booking. Loud alone is a vacuum cleaner; door traffic alone is a family unloading a car. Together, late, during a stay, is worth a message.
5. Hear about a broken connection, not a silent house
“If any of my device connections stops working, text me.”
Uses: an external trigger that is not a device at all — the health of the connection to a vendor’s cloud. When a vendor stops answering, every reading behind it goes stale; this tells you once per outage, so you know the house has gone quiet because nothing is reporting, not because nothing is wrong.
6. One leak rule for every property
“If any of my properties detects a leak, text me.”
Uses: one rule that watches a kind of device across the whole portfolio, instead of one rule per house. It reports each property separately, and properties with no leak sensor are recorded as not watched rather than counted as dry.
What stays the same
A simple rule is still simple. “Turn the porch light on at sunset” is one sentence in Homatic and one routine in SmartThings, and if that is all you need, the app that came with your hub will do it well. The difference shows up in the rules that have to wait, retry, remember, count, compare or watch for something other than a device — the ones that decide whether a rental runs itself or quietly needs you.
Two limits apply to every Homatic rule: you review it before it is saved, and a rule triggered by smoke or carbon monoxide can only send alerts, never operate a device. Homatic is not a life-safety system.
Common questions
Can I build automations in the SmartThings app instead?
Yes, for rules that are a trigger and an action: open Favorites, tap +, Create routine, add an If and a Then, test and save. SmartThings also supports conditions that must hold for a while, preconditions, and delayed actions. What its Routines editor does not offer is retrying until something works, alerting only after the attempts are spent, remembering and restoring a value, counting events, or starting from a booking.
Do I have to write code to build a complex automation in Homatic?
No. You describe it in a sentence, Homatic writes the rule against the devices that property actually has, and you review and adjust it before anything is saved.
What is retry logic in a smart home automation?
An automation that checks whether its action took effect and tries again if it did not, a set number of times, then tells you once if it still failed. Locking a door after checkout is the common case: a deadbolt can stall, and a single command sent once cannot know.
Does Homatic replace SmartThings?
No. Homatic connects to your SmartThings account, along with Nest, Schlage, Hue and other vendors, and runs rules across all of them. Your devices stay in the apps they are already in.
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