HomeAssistant. Wow. How had I not heard of this before this year?

It's allegedly an open source home automation system, but I keep running into ways that it's actually way better than that. You can connect it to just about anything: Sure, air conditioning and lighting and smart locks and all the other home automation stuff. But also fitbit, mattress coolers, various internet data sources; you can use it to set up a custom ChatGPT-powered Google Home replacement (finally!).

And it's all so polished! Like, yes you need to be a level-1 technical person to set it up, and to use the more advanced features, but the flows are so reasonable and reliable. I'm genuinely kinda shocked.