Hi,
one of the reasons I want more Matter devices in my home is the device-to-device direct connections over the Thread protocol (similar to Zigbee). The idea is that devices can directly control each other or provide information to one another, and continue working even if the homeowner has once again broken Home Assistant.
In principle, the HA Matter Server can create direct bindings — but I find the UI really not user-friendly. This is where a new Home Assistant integration comes into play: a simplified UI for creating Matter bindings (and potentially groups and scenes) directly on the Matter layer.
The extension can easily be added via HACS. The repository is here:
I’d love to get some feedback 
. I personally only have temperature sensors I can bind, and that leads to my second idea: Matter Survey.
Matter Survey .org (sorry, new user, i cannot put more than 2 links) is an anonymized data pool that catalogs which devices expose which capabilities (clusters, in Matter-speak). The HACS integration optionally sends data directly to the website about which Matter devices are being used and which clusters they support. My hope is to give the community more clarity about which devices fully leverage Matter’s potential — without having to buy devices first and then be disappointed that this or that feature doesn’t work.
The data is fully anonymized and contains only a random installation ID so the website can aggregate how many devices of each type are popular. The survey runs once a week in the background (or manually through the UI). The survey contains absolutely no personal data and can be disabled in the integration’s settings.