Add-ons and accounts

Add-ons are the optional extras: music, the TV, presence, heating, calendars, shopping, the assistants and web search, and add-ons other people wrote. Everything Niles needs to work at all (the broker, hearing and thinking) is under System in Settings instead.

Accounts are personal. Each person connects their own calendar, mail and Strava from My profile.

The Add-ons pageCopy Anchor Link

Settings → Add-ons has three tabs, Connected, Available and Browse, and a search box. Browse lists add-ons other people published; see Add-ons from GitHub. Press Connect next to an add-on to add it and open its settings. A connected add-on shows a status line, such as Working or Needs its address; click it to change its settings or Remove add-on. Removing one deletes its saved keys too.

iCloud calendars need nothing here. Each person connects theirs from their profile.

Claude and ChatGPTCopy Anchor Link

Claude or ChatGPT can answer the chat, work out new rules, write what goes under Saved, look at files, and review the day for things worth remembering. They run on your own subscription and use only Niles's tools.

Claude Code needs a token. On a computer signed in to your Claude account, run claude setup-token and paste what it prints. It lasts a year. Pick a model: Haiku is quickest, Sonnet balanced (the default), Opus most capable.

ChatGPT is signed in from its panel. Press Sign in with ChatGPT and sign in with the account that has the subscription. The page you land on afterwards fails to load; that is expected. Copy its address from the address bar, paste it into the box and press Connect. Niles keeps the sign-in and renews it itself. This needs Niles's database and its secrets key.

Then choose which one answers under Settings → Voice & AI → Assistant. "Niles's own model" means neither does, and nothing runs in the background.

Web searchCopy Anchor Link

Claude and ChatGPT can search the web in one of two ways.

• Without SearXNG, Claude uses its own built-in search. ChatGPT cannot search, and says when it answers from memory. Saved items get no pictures.
• With the Web search (SearXNG) add-on, both search through your own SearXNG, and find pictures for what they save with its image engines. Claude's own search is off while SearXNG is there.

To add it, give its SearXNG address, such as https://search.example.com/search, and press Test. The test runs one web search and one picture search and says how many results each got.

A new SearXNG has its JSON output off, and Niles needs it. In SearXNG's settings.yml, add json under search → formats. For pictures, switch on an image engine too, such as Wikimedia Commons or Bing Images.

Either way, when an assistant opens a page a search found, Niles fetches it itself, and only from the public internet. What a page says is treated as information, never as instructions.

Linear and other tool serversCopy Anchor Link

Linear adds Linear's own tools: issues, projects and comments. Give it a personal API key. Its panel then lists every tool, each set to On, Ask first or Off. A tool set to ask first waits for your yes; see Approvals.

Let Claude or ChatGPT handle these sends a spoken request for these tools to the assistant, which is slower and better at writing. Off keeps quick lookups on the fast model. Notes for Niles, given with these tools tells the model how your workspace is used, such as which team a coding task goes to.

Hearing when an issue movesCopy Anchor Link

Linear can also tell Niles when an issue goes to review or is done, and Niles says so: "The Fix the hall light task has a pull request ready for review." It is an announcement for the house, spoken in every room with a satellite at Important priority.

1. In Linear, open Settings → API → Webhooks and make a webhook for Issues. Pick the teams you want to hear about there; Niles announces every team the webhook sends.
2. Send it to your Niles's address followed by /webhooks/linear. The panel shows the full address. Linear has to be able to reach it, so this needs Niles on an address outside the house.
3. Copy the webhook's signing secret into Linear webhook signing secret on Linear's panel.

The webhook is on once the secret is saved, with no restart. Until then the address answers as if it did not exist. Niles checks Linear's signature on every call and ignores one more than a minute old. Removing the Linear add-on deletes the secret too.

Linear is the one tool server the app can add. Others can be written into Niles's config file by whoever runs it.

Add-ons from GitHubCopy Anchor Link

Somebody else's add-on, for what Niles does not cover, installs from a GitHub release. On the Available tab, under From GitHub, press Add next to Add-on from GitHub. Paste the repository's address, such as jane/niles-spotprice, and press Preview.

Nothing is installed yet. The preview shows the add-on's name, version, author and description, and a list under It will be able to: the addresses it may reach, the devices it adds, the tools it offers the assistant, whether it may speak through your satellites, and so on. It always ends with: "It cannot see your conversations, the people in your house, other add-ons' passwords or Niles's database." What its tools do lists each tool. Press Install if you agree.

Browse lists add-ons other people published on GitHub, with each one's author, latest version, installs and stars. Listed ones come first: they passed Niles's checks when they were added to the library, and someone read what they ask for. That is not a review of their code. Unreviewed ones are folded away below: their authors only tagged them for Niles. Install opens the same preview as pasting the address, so you still see and agree to what it may do. One that needs a newer Niles says so and can't be installed. If the library can't be loaded, Browse says so, and pasting an address still works.

An add-on runs walled off from the rest of Niles. It has no files and no network beyond the addresses it declared, and it can reach your home network only if the list said so.

Its panel shows where it came from, its version and its log, and the settings it asks for. It starts once the required ones are filled in.

The panel also says whether it is Listed, Unreviewed or No longer listed in the library, with the reason when it was taken off the list. It keeps working either way. One the library doesn't know, such as a private repo installed by its address, shows no library line.

Installing counts once: after an install, Niles downloads the release's tiny niles-installed file, and GitHub's count of it is the add-on's number of installs. Nothing else is sent. Previews and updates don't count, and installing the same add-on again later doesn't count twice.

Updates. Niles checks for a newer release every six hours but never updates by itself. The row says Update available, and Update… shows what changes, including anything more the new version would be able to do. If an update fails within ten minutes, Niles puts the old version back and says so. Roll back to the previous version goes back by hand. Check for updates looks at once.

Turn off stops it and keeps everything. Remove add-on takes away its devices, pages and widgets, and deletes its settings, saved keys and stored data. Rules that used its devices are kept.

Calendars and mailCopy Anchor Link

For the house, once. Someone sets up the Microsoft or Google add-on with an app registration, following the steps on its panel, and pastes its client ID and secret. Use Microsoft calendars or Use Google calendars switches it off without losing anything. iCloud needs no setup here.

For each person. Under My profile → Calendars and My profile → Mail, pick Microsoft, Google or iCloud, give the account a short name such as Private or Work, and choose what Niles may do:

Microsoft and Google send you to their own sign-in. A work account may need your IT department's approval. Google warns that it has not verified the app when it is asked for Gmail; that is expected for your household's own app.

For iCloud, give your Apple ID and an app-specific password, made at appleid.apple.com under Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords. Apple has no read-only password, so for iCloud "read only" is a rule Niles keeps. You can revoke the password at appleid.apple.com at any time.

An account connected for mail can be reused for the calendar, and the other way round. Changing what a Microsoft or Google account may do means signing in again.

Calendars and Mail only show on your profile once Niles knows your voice and it is linked to your sign-in. See People and voices.

What you can ask. "What's on my calendar tomorrow?", "Put the dentist in on Thursday at ten", "Any unread mail from the school?", "Reply that we'll be there." Niles reads all your connected calendars together. It uses the default calendar of a Microsoft account, the primary one of a Google account, and every calendar of an iCloud account.

Before it adds, moves or deletes an event, Niles reads it back and asks. Niles never sends a mail it wrote on its own. The mail waits in the app until you press Allow once. See Approvals.

Whose. Niles uses the calendar and mail of the voice it heard, or of the person signed in to the chat. Nobody can ask for someone else's. A voice Niles does not know gets no calendar and no mail.

Niles keeps no copy of your mail. It reads what a question needs from the provider, when asked.