I almost chocked on my drink laughing when I read this. Maybe they already are sentient but you don’t know it yet 
@benflux Building on Geoff’s thoughts… I use the following flow to check the startup state of Node-Red before doing some automations.
[{"id":"a98465a0152daeee","type":"switch","z":"fe1a8042.af255","name":"State","property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"eq","v":"connecting","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"connected","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"states_loaded","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"services_loaded","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"disconnected","vt":"str"},{"t":"eq","v":"running","vt":"str"}],"checkall":"true","repair":false,"outputs":6,"x":270,"y":1140,"wires":[[],[],[],["2e51c88f4a7e51e2"],[],[]]},{"id":"ace102795cfc974e","type":"server-events","z":"fe1a8042.af255","name":"HA Startup","server":"f3f422ce.9f2a6","version":2,"eventType":"home_assistant_client","exposeToHomeAssistant":false,"eventData":"","haConfig":[{"property":"name","value":""},{"property":"icon","value":""}],"waitForRunning":true,"outputProperties":[{"property":"payload","propertyType":"msg","value":"","valueType":"eventData"}],"x":80,"y":1140,"wires":[["a98465a0152daeee"]]},{"id":"f3f422ce.9f2a6","type":"server","name":"Home Assistant","version":5,"addon":true,"rejectUnauthorizedCerts":true,"ha_boolean":"y|yes|true|on|home|open","connectionDelay":true,"cacheJson":true,"heartbeat":false,"heartbeatInterval":30,"areaSelector":"friendlyName","deviceSelector":"friendlyName","entitySelector":"friendlyName","statusSeparator":"at: ","statusYear":"hidden","statusMonth":"short","statusDay":"numeric","statusHourCycle":"h23","statusTimeFormat":"h:m","enableGlobalContextStore":true}]
Also, I queue the first message only on selected call service nodes to fire after Node-Red startup.
Could your automation be running before Node-Red is ready?