Hue-topia vs 3rd Party Phillips Hue APIs

With listening mode enabled, this app can trigger a preset, then revert to the prior mode after a specified amount of time has elapsed. This was intended to be a security feature. The idea is if someone broke into your house or something and they approached your computer or wherever your microphone is, Hue-topia would register the sound and trigger hue lights of your choosing, and this might be enough to scare them away.

This feature could be used in unintended (hacky) ways as well such as with a virtual audio device such as Loopback. It's a simple feature, it's only good for triggering one preset temporarily and then reverting to the current settings. It can't do Home Kit/Siri kind of stuff.

It can be set to a user chosen time or use your geological location.

The trial is 30 days, the software is not limited in any way AFAIK. A nag screen pops up whenever launching the app.

You can assign function keys 1-8 to trigger presets. You can also turn all lights off (but not on, however you can get around that with the presets + fn keys) and a few other misc keyboard shortcuts.

More features include hiding individual lights (see only groups).

Basic handling of repeating events daily, weekly, etc.

Some of the APIs are command line friendly. There was a Bash API on the list. It might be very easy to pick up and use. It could be a fun project to learn how to design an application that uses a ncurses interface.

Make what you want with less sweat equity than starting completely from scratch. The frameworks are there, it's a matter of learning them and building with them.