A smart switch that fails when the internet does is worse than a dumb one. INXT devices talk to each other and to the app over the local network first; the cloud is for convenience — remote access, OTA updates, analytics — never for the critical path.
Practically, that means scene execution and schedules live on the devices themselves, discovery works over mDNS, and commands round-trip in under 100 ms on the LAN. When the ISP fails, the home simply keeps working.
Local-first is also a privacy stance: telemetry is aggregated and opt-in, and no video or audio ever transits our cloud.