![This image shows a smart home where there are multiple smart
connected devices throughout the house.](https://developers.home.google.com/static/cloud-to-cloud/images/smart-home.svg)

The Google Cloud-to-cloud platform lets users control your
commercially available connected devices through the
[Google Home app (GHA)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.chromecast.app) and
[Google Assistant](https://assistant.google.com/), which is available on more than 1 billion devices like smart
speakers, phones, cars, TVs, headphones, watches, and more.

## Why build

The benefits to you include deepening user engagement, driving sales of your
devices and growing your brand value.

- **Deepen user engagement** --- Reach users across 1 billion Assistant devices, improve discoverability, and remove friction from set-up.
- **Drive sales** --- Become discoverable on Shopping on Search, increase eligibility to be featured across retail, installer channels.
- **Grow brand value** --- Be at the center of the helpful home. Enable users to know your brand due to reliability and rich features.

## How to build

To connect your device with Assistant, you need to build
a Cloud-to-cloud integration. Assistant handles
how users trigger your Action (in multiple languages) and provides you with
useful metadata through **Google Home Graph** (such as the state
of a specific device based on the user's room). All you need to do is respond
to the requests through your fulfillment service.

**The easiest way to get started is by going through our codelabs.** We
recommend doing both of these codelabs, which walk you through portions of the
development process, step-by-step:

After that, check our list of **supported devices** to ensure that what you
plan to integrate is supported in the Google Home ecosystem.
Then read through the **Developer Checklist** to understand the entire
development flow from project creation to launch.

[Supported Devices](https://developers.home.google.com/cloud-to-cloud/supported-devices)
[Developer Checklist](https://developers.home.google.com/cloud-to-cloud/checklist)

## Google Home Playground

Use Google Home Playground to simulate a smart home project with your device
types and traits. Create virtual devices, modify the device attributes and
states, and more. See the
[Google Home Playground](https://developers.home.google.com/cloud-to-cloud/tools/home-playground) page for more
details.

[Launch Playground](https://home-playground.withgoogle.com/)

## Debugging and analytics

If you've already built a smart home action and need to:

- Debug your action, go to the [Debugging the smart home](https://developers.home.google.com/codelabs/smarthome-debugging) codelab.
- Access logs or create log-based metrics, go to the [Log-based metrics for smart home](https://developers.home.google.com/codelabs/log-based-metrics) codelab.
- Set up alerts to monitor outages, go to the [Monitoring outages for smart home](https://developers.home.google.com/codelabs/monitoring-outages) codelab.

## Definitions

The following terms are used throughout this documentation:

Authentication
:   Links your users' Google accounts with user accounts in your authentication
    system.

Device trait
:   Device traits define the capabilities of a device type.

Device type
:   Let Assistant know what grammar should be used with
    your device.

Fulfillment
:   A service that handles a smart home intent and carries out
    the corresponding Action.

Google Home ecosystem
:   A platform that lets you create a smart home Action to
    extend the functionality of the Assistant to control
    connected devices.

Home Graph
:   A database that stores and provides contextual data about the home and its
    devices.

smart home intents
:   Simple messaging objects that describe how to perform a
    smart home Action such as turn on a light or cast audio to a
    speaker.