"Instant" scene response for Google Home? (Template switch?)

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

Hi all,

I’ve fallen victim to the “Sorry, I could not reach…” issue with Google Assistant. This is due to an Evening Lights scene that I have in place that hits a number of devices and is slow in responding to Google servers.

Is there a way to set up an “instant response” switch that responds with on/off without waiting for actions to complete? I’ve tried this:

switch:
  - platform: template
    switches:
      evening_lights_switch:
        friendly_name: Evening Lights
        #value_template: "{{ is_state('evening_lights_switch', 'on') }}"
        turn_on:
          service: scene.turn_on
          entity_id: scene.evening_lights
        turn_off:
          service: scene.turn_on
          entity_id: scene.all_lights_off

I’ve tried with and without value_template, hoping that based on the documentation here: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/switch.template/, it would “optimistically assume all commands are successful.”

However it seems like the time-until-success is still too long. If I say: “Turn on the evening lights” it works, but also responds with “Sorry, I could not reach…”, but if I say “Turn on the office light” it works just fine with the snappy response.

Any ideas?