timers-alarms-reminders

[FHLiang221]

What does this Ability do?

A combined interactive + background daemon ability that handles timers, alarms, and reminders through natural voice interaction. Users can set, list, cancel, and delete events. A background watcher fires events when due — timers get a spoken notification, alarms play a sound, and reminders speak the message.

Suggested Trigger Words

• set a timer
• set an alarm
• remind me
• wake me up
• timers
• alarms
• reminders
• schedule

Type

• New community Ability
• Improvement to existing Ability
• Bug fix
• Documentation update

External APIs

• No external APIs
• Uses external API(s):

Testing

• Tested in OpenHome Live Editor
• All exit paths tested (said "stop", "exit", etc.)
• Error scenarios tested (API down, bad input, etc.)

Checklist

• Files are in community/timers-alarms-reminders/
• main.py follows SDK pattern (extends MatchingCapability, has register_capability + call)
• README.md included with description, suggested triggers, and setup
• resume_normal_flow() called on every exit path
• No print() — using editor_logging_handler
• No hardcoded API keys — using placeholders
• No blocked imports (redis, connection_manager, user_config)
• No asyncio.sleep() or asyncio.create_task() — using session_tasks
• Error handling on all external calls
• Tested in OpenHome Live Editor

Anything else?

Includes a background.py background daemon that polls scheduled_events.json every 5 seconds and fires due events. Also writes upcoming_schedule.md so the Personality stays aware of what's scheduled. Includes alarm.mp3 for alarm sounds.

[github-actions]

🔀 Branch Merge Check

PR direction: add-timers-alarms-reminders → dev

✅ Passed — add-timers-alarms-reminders → dev is a valid merge direction

[github-actions]

✅ Community PR Path Check — Passed

All changed files are inside the community/ folder. Looks good!

[github-actions]

✅ Ability Validation Passed

📋 Validating: community/timers-alarms-reminders
  ✅ All checks passed!

[github-actions]

🔍 Lint Results

✅ __init__.py — Empty as expected

Files linted: community/timers-alarms-reminders/background.py community/timers-alarms-reminders/main.py

✅ Flake8 — Passed

✅ All checks passed!

[uzair401]

Hey @FHLiang221, great work on the structure here — the LLM-routed intent classification is the right approach and the background watcher pattern is solid. Found a few things that need to be fixed before this can be approved though:

1. The delete and list fast-paths in _process_request use hardcoded in lower substring matching before the LLM ever sees the input — a user saying "get rid of my alarm", "wipe everything", or "what have I got set" will silently fall through to the wrong action or no action. Remove both fast-paths entirely and let the LLM handle DELETE_ALL and LIST_EVENTS — it already does this correctly.

2. QUIT_WORDS and EXIT_WORDS are missing too many natural spoken variants to be reliable. QUIT_WORDS is missing: "stop", "cancel", "forget it", "nevermind" (one word — common STT output), "never mind that", "leave it". EXIT_WORDS is missing: "no thanks", "I'm all set", "that'll do", "that's all", "we're good", "all good". Long-term fix: replace _wants_to_quit and _wants_to_exit with a single LLM classifier — "Is the user trying to stop or exit? Return YES or NO."

3. The affirmatives set in _process_request is missing: "absolutely", "go ahead", "do it", "sounds good", "why not", "let's do it", "uh-huh", "please". Same fix — swap for an LLM classifier.

4. _is_bare_trigger uses rstrip("s") to handle plurals, which silently corrupts any word ending in "s" that isn't a plural. Replace with an explicit set: {"alarm", "alarms", "timer", "timers", "reminder", "reminders", "schedule"} mapped to their canonical form.

5. _build_system_prompt has no instruction for how QUESTION: responses should sound — that text goes directly into speak() and could come back with bullet points or markdown. Add to the prompt: "Questions must be plain spoken English — no bullet points, no markdown, no lists. One short question only, under 15 words."

6. _handle_list can produce 50–70 words in one unbroken sentence when 4–5 events are scheduled. Cap the spoken summary at 3 items and append "and X more" for the rest.

7. "Done. Your %s %s has been cancelled." — word order sounds unnatural on TTS. Change to "Done. Your %s %s is cancelled." — drops "has been", cleaner output.

8. "Quitting ability." appears three times in first_setup — robotic, leaks implementation detail. Change to "All done." consistently.

9. "All done. Handing you back." — "handing you back" is a technical phrase users don't expect to hear. Change to "All done.".

10. "I didn't catch that. You can set timers, alarms, or reminders. Just tell me what you need." — 20 words, reads like a manual. Change to "Didn't catch that — try saying something like 'set a timer for 10 minutes'." — gives a concrete example instead of a category list.

11. "I asked too many questions. Let's start over — just tell me what you need." — exposes internal loop logic to the user. Change to "I'm having trouble with that one. Could you try saying it a different way?"

12. Both error handlers say "Something went wrong. Please try again." — fine for length but offers no path forward on a voice device. Change to "Sorry, something went wrong. Try saying your request again."

[uzair401]

Please address the issues explained in the comments above, and once resolved I'll take another look!