A smart home MCP server: let your AI agent run your home
Gladys Assistant includes a Model Context Protocol server. Connect Claude, Copilot, Perplexity or Le Chat, and talk to your real home from the AI tools you already use.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard AI agents use to call external tools. An MCP server exposes functions, and any compatible client, like Claude Desktop or VS Code, can use them in a conversation.
Gladys Assistant, the free and open-source smart home platform, ships its own MCP server. Enable it, generate a key, and your AI agent can read every sensor in your home, look through your cameras, switch lights and plugs, and launch your scenes. No cloud account, no third-party bridge: the server runs on your own Gladys, on your local network.
Why connect an AI agent to your home?
Chatbots are great at reasoning, but they know nothing about your home. With MCP, they get real data and real controls:
- Ask questions no dashboard answers: "Which room was the coldest last night, and was a window open?"
- Analyze history: "Compare this week's electricity use with last week's and tell me what changed."
- Check on the house: "Is anyone in the garden? Describe what the camera sees."
- Act in plain language: "Turn off everything in the living room and start the movie scene."
- Mix your home with your other tools: the same agent can read your calendar, your code or your documents through its other MCP servers.
Your agent reasons, Gladys executes. Your automations and devices stay in Gladys, where they keep running with or without the AI.
Local MCP vs remote MCP
Gladys gives you two ways to reach the MCP server:
| Local MCP (free) | Remote MCP (Gladys Plus) | |
|---|---|---|
| URL | http://YOUR_GLADYS_IP/api/v1/service/mcp/proxy | https://api.gladysgateway.com/v1/api/mcp/<API key> |
| Where it works | On your home network | Anywhere, through Gladys Plus |
| Clients | Claude Desktop, VS Code Copilot, Perplexity… | The same, plus web-only clients like Mistral Le Chat |
| Price | Free | Included in Gladys Plus |
Clients that only speak MCP over stdio, like the free Claude Desktop, connect through the small open-source mcp-proxy bridge. The setup takes a few minutes and is described step by step in the documentation.
What the Gladys MCP server exposes
Today, an MCP client connected to Gladys can:
The latest value or the history of temperature, humidity, energy, CO₂, air quality, motion, contact, leak, smoke, presence and many more.
Pull a camera image so the agent can describe what it sees, if your client supports images.
Turn lights on and off, room by room or all at once.
Switch smart plugs, relays and switches from any brand Gladys supports.
Start any Gladys scene: the agent triggers it, Gladys runs it locally and reliably.
Each client gets its own key, generated in Gladys and revocable at any time.
How to connect Claude to your smart home
Four steps, on any Gladys installation:
- Install Gladys on a mini-PC, a Raspberry Pi or a NAS with Docker, and add your devices.
- In Gladys, open Integrations → MCP and generate an API key for your client.
- Add the Gladys MCP server to your client: the local URL and the key in the Authorization header (through mcp-proxy for Claude Desktop).
- Restart the client and ask: "What's the temperature in the bedroom?"
The full configuration for Claude Desktop, Perplexity, VS Code and Le Chat is in the MCP documentation.
The AI is swappable, your home stays yours
MCP is an open standard, so you're not locked into one AI vendor: use Claude today, another model tomorrow, or a local model on your own machine with an MCP-capable client such as LM Studio. Gladys stays the source of truth for your devices, and it's open source under Apache 2.0.
Prefer an assistant that works out of the box? Gladys Plus includes a built-in AI assistant, powered by open-weight models hosted in France, that you can talk to from the chat, Telegram or a voice widget.
Go further
More ways to bring AI into your home:
Step-by-step configuration for Claude Desktop, Perplexity, VS Code and Le Chat.
Natural-language control, a proactive AI agent and a weekly report, privately.
Why local-first matters and how to build a home that runs without the cloud.
The brands and protocols your AI agent can control through Gladys.
Frequently asked questions
What is an MCP server for home automation?
An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server exposes your smart home as tools an AI agent can call: read a sensor, get its history, switch a light, launch a scene. Gladys Assistant includes one, so any MCP-compatible client can talk to your real devices.
Can I control my smart home with Claude?
Yes. Enable the MCP integration in Gladys, generate an API key, and add the Gladys MCP server to Claude Desktop (through the open-source mcp-proxy bridge). Claude can then read your sensors, view your cameras, control lights and plugs, and launch scenes.
Which AI clients work with the Gladys MCP server?
Any MCP-compatible client. The documentation covers Claude Desktop, Perplexity, GitHub Copilot in VS Code and Mistral Le Chat. Clients that only reach MCP servers on the internet, like Le Chat, use the remote URL provided by Gladys Plus.
Does it work with ChatGPT?
ChatGPT connects to custom MCP servers in its developer mode, on paid plans, and only to remote servers over HTTPS. It therefore needs the remote URL provided by Gladys Plus. The Gladys documentation currently covers Claude Desktop, Perplexity, VS Code and Le Chat step by step.
Is the Gladys MCP server free?
Yes. The local MCP server is part of Gladys, which is free and open source. Reaching it from outside your home, or from web-only clients, goes through the Gladys Plus Open API.
Does my data go to the AI provider?
Only what the agent asks for in a conversation, sent to the AI provider you chose. Gladys itself stays on your hardware and each client uses its own revocable key. For maximum privacy, use a local model with an MCP-capable client.
Can the AI agent break my automations?
The MCP server exposes a limited set of actions: reading states and camera images, switching lights and plugs, and launching existing scenes. Your automations are defined and run by Gladys, which keeps working even if the AI is disconnected.
Plug your AI agent into your home
Gladys is free, open source and installs with a single Docker command. Its MCP server is built in.