It's Sunday evening and you're trying to work out whether you can afford to replace the boiler this month. You know there are a few bills coming up but you can't quite remember which ones, when they're due, or what the car insurance renewal is. Your partner asks if you've booked the MOT. You're fairly sure you haven't.
Opening SimpliHome, clicking through to bills, switching to vehicles, checking the calendar — it takes two minutes and three tabs.
Or you just ask.
SimpliHome's AI Household Assistant knows your household data and answers questions about it in plain English. Bills, calendar, cars, chores, recipes, renewals, household members — all of it available in a single conversation.
And as of today, it's not just inside the SimpliHome app. You can now connect your household data to external AI tools — Claude Desktop, Cursor, and others — using MCP (Model Context Protocol). Your AI tools can now know your household too.
#What the AI Household Assistant Actually Does
What is it?
The AI Household Assistant is a conversational AI that has access to your Circle's data. You ask questions in natural language, and it answers using your actual household information — not generic advice, not made-up details, but the real data from your SimpliHome account.
What does it know about?
- Bills — provider, amount, due date, payment method, which ones are coming up
- Calendar — upcoming events, what's on today, what's on this week
- Cars — MOT dates, road tax, insurance, breakdown cover
- Chores — what's pending, who's responsible, what's overdue
- Members — who's in your household, by name, and their roles
- Recipes — your saved recipes, ingredients, meal ideas
- Renewals — everything due for renewal across bills and vehicles, sorted by date
Does it just give you a list?
No. It understands your question and responds conversationally. Ask "do I have anything expensive coming up this month?" and it won't list every record — it'll pick out the financially significant ones and give you a clear answer. Ask "is the car sorted?" and it'll tell you whether MOT, road tax, and insurance are all current.
Is this read-only?
Yes. The AI Household Assistant is a read-only assistant — it answers questions, it doesn't create or edit records. For creating events, adding bills, or updating vehicle data, you use the SimpliHome app directly.
#Five Ways to Use It
#1. In-App Chat
The most direct way to use the assistant is through the Chat section inside SimpliHome. Type your question, get an answer. The conversation is contextual, so you can ask follow-up questions without repeating yourself.
Example conversation:
You: "What bills do I have coming up in the next two weeks?"
Assistant: "You have three bills due in the next fortnight. Your Sky broadband renews on the 12th at £54/month. Council tax comes out on the 15th — that's your monthly direct debit of £189. And your Netflix subscription is due on the 19th at £17.99. Nothing overdue at the moment."
You: "What about the car — is everything up to date?"
Assistant: "The Ford Focus is in good shape — MOT runs until September, road tax until November, and insurance until March next year. The Vauxhall Astra's breakdown cover expires at the end of this month, though, so that might be worth renewing."
#2. iOS App
The AI Household Assistant is built into SimpliHome's iOS app. Same capability as the web version — ask anything about your household, get an answer — but available on your phone wherever you are.
Useful when you're out and need to check something quickly. At the garage and need to know your insurance renewal date. At the supermarket wondering what's on the meal plan. At the school gate trying to remember what's in the calendar this week.
#3. WhatsApp
You can connect the assistant to WhatsApp and message it like you'd message anyone else. SimpliHome sends you a WhatsApp number; you save it and message away.
This is the lowest-friction option for a lot of people. No app to open, no login — just send a message from the WhatsApp you're already in.
"What chores are still outstanding?"
"When's the next calendar event?"
"Do we have anything coming up that I should know about this week?"
Setup takes about two minutes from Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp.
#4. Siri, Alexa, and Google Home
SimpliHome integrates with Siri Shortcuts, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home for hands-free household queries. Ask your smart speaker or use "Hey Siri" while your hands are full.
This is covered in detail in the Voice AI setup guide — including step-by-step account linking for Alexa and Google Home.
#5. External AI Tools via MCP (New)
This is the new one, and it's worth explaining properly.
#Now Your AI Tools Know Your Household Too
#What is MCP?
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. In plain English: it's a standard way for AI tools to connect to external data sources so they can answer questions about that data.
Think of it like this. When you use Claude Desktop, it's a powerful AI but it only knows what's in its training data and what you paste into the conversation. It doesn't know when your MOT is due, what bills you've got coming up, or what's on your household calendar — because that's your private data, not something it has access to.
MCP changes that. By connecting SimpliHome to an AI tool via MCP, you give that tool read access to your household data. Now when you're in Claude Desktop working on something and you think "I wonder if we can afford this this month," you can just ask — without copying anything, without switching apps, without manually providing context.
The AI tool queries SimpliHome in the background, gets your real data, and answers your question.
#Which AI Tools Support MCP?
MCP is an open standard and adoption is growing rapidly:
- Claude Desktop — full MCP support, the most straightforward setup
- Cursor — the AI code editor supports MCP, useful if you're someone who spends time there
- Other tools — the MCP ecosystem is expanding; check whether your preferred AI tool supports MCP servers
#Setting Up MCP: Step by Step
Step 1: Create an API token
- Go to Settings → API Tokens in SimpliHome
- Click New Token
- Give it a name (e.g. "Claude Desktop")
- Under Scopes, select mcp:use
- Click Create
- Copy the token — you'll only see it once
Step 2: Configure your AI tool
For Claude Desktop, open your configuration file (on a Mac, this is at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json) and add the SimpliHome MCP server:
1{
2 "mcpServers": {
3 "simplihome": {
4 "command": "npx",
5 "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://app.simplihome.co.uk/mcp/household"],
6 "env": {
7 "API_TOKEN": "your-token-here"
8 }
9 }
10 }
11}
Replace your-token-here with the token you just created. Save the file and restart Claude Desktop.
For Cursor and other MCP-compatible tools, the connection details are the same — the server URL is https://app.simplihome.co.uk/mcp/household and authentication uses your API token as a bearer token. Check your specific tool's MCP configuration documentation for the exact format.
Step 3: Ask away
Once connected, your AI tool has access to your household data through the following capabilities:
bills— your bills with provider, amount, due date, payment methodcalendar— upcoming eventscars— your vehicles and their MOT, tax, insurance, breakdown dateschores— pending and overdue household tasksfinances— financial overview (admin access required)members— household member names and rolesrecipes— your saved recipe libraryrenewals— everything due for renewal, sorted by date
#What This Looks Like in Practice
You're in Claude Desktop drafting a monthly budget review. You ask:
"What bills do I have coming up in the next 30 days and what do they add up to?"
Claude queries SimpliHome, gets your actual bill data, and responds:
"You have five bills due in the next 30 days: Sky broadband on the 12th (£54), council tax on the 15th (£189), gym membership on the 18th (£35), Netflix on the 19th (£17.99), and your AA breakdown cover on the 27th (£14.50). That's £310.49 in total for the month."
No copy-pasting. No switching apps. Just a question and an answer based on your real data.
Or you're in Cursor working on a personal project and you want to plan around what's coming up:
"Are there any household deadlines or renewals I should know about in the next six weeks?"
The AI checks your SimpliHome renewals, cross-references your calendar, and gives you a summary of what's coming — vehicle renewals, bill due dates, any events worth noting.
#Example Conversations
Here are some of the most useful questions you can ask the AI Household Assistant, in any of the channels above:
Getting a household summary:
You: "Give me a quick overview of where things stand — anything urgent?"
Assistant: "A few things worth knowing. The Astra's breakdown cover expires in nine days, so that's the most time-sensitive item. You've got Sky and council tax both due within the next fortnight. On the calendar, Emma has her dentist appointment on Thursday and there's a parents' evening a week on Monday. No overdue chores — Tom finished the last one on Friday."
Planning around a specific date:
You: "Is the week of the 23rd busy? We're thinking of going away that weekend."
Assistant: "That week's fairly light. Monday has nothing on. Tuesday evening there's a school parents' evening at 6:30pm — worth checking if anyone needs to be there. Wednesday to Friday looks clear. The weekend itself has no events in the calendar, so it looks like a good window."
Checking before a big purchase:
You: "Is there anything financially significant coming up in the next two months that I should factor in before buying something expensive?"
Assistant: "The main items to note: home insurance renews on the 14th of next month (£65/month, so a year's premium would be around £780 if you paid annually). The Ford Focus MOT is in seven weeks — fingers crossed it passes cleanly but worth budgeting for any work. Nothing else out of the ordinary — the regular monthly bills are all ticking along."
Meal planning help:
You: "We need to plan dinners for this week. What recipes do we have that are quick to make?"
Assistant: "Looking through your recipe library, the quickest options are the chicken stir-fry (20 minutes), pasta arrabiata (25 minutes), and the Thai-style salmon (30 minutes). You've also got the lentil soup saved — that takes longer but works well if you're doing batch cooking at the weekend. Want me to list the ingredients for any of them?"
#What the AI Household Assistant Doesn't Do
To be clear about scope:
The assistant is read-only. It can answer questions about your data but cannot:
- Create or edit calendar events
- Add or modify bills
- Update vehicle information
- Create to-do items or mark chores as done
- Make any changes to your SimpliHome account
This is intentional. Read access gives you a powerful question-and-answer capability without any risk of the AI inadvertently modifying your household records. Any changes you want to make, you make yourself in the app.
#Security and Privacy
Is my data secure when using MCP?
The MCP endpoint is the same security model as the rest of SimpliHome. Your data is only accessible to tools that have a valid API token with the mcp:use scope. The connection uses HTTPS and standard bearer token authentication.
What data can the AI tool access?
Only the data your Circle contains — bills, calendar, vehicles, chores, members, recipes, renewals. It cannot access other Circles' data, and financial details (the finances tool) require circle admin access.
Can I revoke access?
Yes. Go to Settings → API Tokens, find the token you created for your AI tool, and delete it. Access is revoked immediately. If you think a token has been compromised, delete it and create a new one.
Does SimpliHome store my AI conversations?
Conversations through the in-app chat and WhatsApp integration are processed to generate answers but are not stored long-term. When using external AI tools via MCP, the conversation happens within your AI tool (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) and SimpliHome only sees the data requests, not the conversation itself.
#Requirements
The AI Household Assistant — including MCP access — is a Premium plan feature.
To check your current plan or upgrade, go to Settings → Subscription within SimpliHome.
If you're already on Premium, the in-app chat is ready to use immediately. For external AI tools, follow the setup guide above — it takes about five minutes.
#Getting Started
For the in-app chat: Open SimpliHome, go to Chat, and start asking. No setup required.
For WhatsApp: Go to Settings → Integrations → WhatsApp and follow the connection steps.
For Alexa and Google Home: See the Voice AI setup guide.
For Claude Desktop and other external AI tools:
- Settings → API Tokens → New Token — select the
mcp:usescope - Add the server configuration to your AI tool using the URL
https://app.simplihome.co.uk/mcp/household - Start asking questions about your household directly from within your AI tool
The idea behind all of this is the same regardless of which channel you use: your household information should be available when you need it, in whatever tool or interface you're already in — without having to go and look it up.
Your household data, wherever you're working. Ask anything.