Google's Gemini may be getting smarter, but Google apparently doesn't think it should be the only AI that can control your smart home. Google has just introduced Home MCP, a new way for third-party AI agents to connect directly to Google Home.
This is exciting news for anyone with smart lights, cameras, thermostats or other connected devices around the house. Now, instead of relying exclusively on Google's own Gemini to understand what's happening in your home and control your devices, Home MCP opens the door for other AI agents to do it. Google specifically lists Claude among the personal AI agents that can connect.
And we're talking about much more than asking Claude to turn off a light.
What could another AI actually do with your home?
Home MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open-source standard originally created by Anthropic (Claude's parent company) to give AI models a standardized way to connect with external data and tools. Google adopting Anthropic's protocol to let Claude run Google Home is a massive cross-industry plot twist.
Google envisions agents monitoring for unusual activity, summarizing what's happened around your home and suggesting ways to improve how your devices are being used.
In other words, it gives an authorized AI agent several different ways to interact with Google Home. It can see which rooms and devices you have, check their current state, and control compatible devices. That means you could ask an AI whether you left something on and then have it take action.
Google says agents can query past device states and chronological event logs, potentially allowing you to ask questions such as "What happened while I was out?"
An agent could use information from multiple smart-home devices to put together an answer rather than making you dig through individual apps and activity histories yourself.
Google also envisions agents monitoring for unusual activity, summarizing what's happened around your home, and suggesting ways to improve how your devices are being used. In other words, the AI doesn't just become another remote control for your smart home. It can potentially become an interface for understanding what's happening inside it.
Why Claude controlling Google Home is a big deal
Until now, choosing a smart-home ecosystem has generally meant choosing its intelligence layer too. Buy into Google Home and you're using Google's software to control it. Alexa+ sits at the center of Amazon's ecosystem, while Apple Home relies entirely on Siri and Apple's own frameworks.
There's another part of this that could ultimately prove more important than device control: context. Imagine telling an AI agent you're heading to bed. Today, that might trigger a rigid, predetermined smart-home routine that locks the doors, adjusts the thermostat, and turns off the lights.
An agent with access to Google Home could potentially check the current state of your house first. Are the outside lights still on? Is the thermostat set differently than usual? Has something unusual happened recently that you might want to know about?
Instead of blindly executing a routine, an AI could reason across that information and decide what actually needs attention. And because an agent can connect your smart home with other parts of your digital life, the possibilities go far beyond individual devices. That's when a smart home starts to look less like a collection of gadgets you control and more like an environment an AI can truly understand.
Obvious privacy questions being raised
Giving an AI agent access to your home is very different from letting it check your calendar.
Google says Home MCP uses a user-authorized OAuth process, meaning an agent can't simply connect itself to your Google Home account without your explicit permission.
Crucially, Google has also hardcoded safety limits into the system. Third-party agents are explicitly blocked from executing sensitive, high-risk actions, an agent won't be allowed to unlock smart locks, open garage doors or disarm security alarms on your behalf.
An AI that knows whether a light is on is one thing while an AI capable of examining device history, monitoring what's happening around your home and issuing commands is another. The more useful these agents become, the more important it will be for users to understand exactly what information an agent can see and exactly what it's allowed to touch.
Don't expect Claude to run your house just yet
There's one big caveat: Home MCP is currently labeled Early Access and targeted at developers. So this isn't a consumer feature that every Google Home owner can simply switch on today in an app menu to start telling Claude to run the house.
But Google is being unusually explicit about where this is heading. Its documentation doesn't describe Home MCP solely as another tool for Gemini. It talks about connecting personal agents to physical spaces and explicitly names third-party assistants.
That's a potentially massive shift in how we think about smart homes. What do you think? Would you consider using another AI for your home? Let me know in the comments.
Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.
More from Tom's Guide
