Remote shutdown already exists. But how do you know it’s actually safe to shut down?

Today I had a small idea that turned into a bigger product question.

Sometimes I leave my computer running and later wonder:

Is it still doing something important?

Or did I just forget to turn it off?

Of course, remote shutdown already exists.

There are plenty of ways to connect to a computer from your phone and turn it off.

But I think the more interesting problem is this:

How do you know whether it’s actually safe to shut it down?

What I’d want is something like this:

Phone → check the current state of my computer → decide whether to leave it running, sleep it, or shut it down.

And eventually, maybe the computer could make part of that decision itself.

For example:

If there has been no activity for a certain amount of time,
and no important task is running,
it could notify me:

“Your computer seems inactive. Shut it down?”

Or, if I trust the rules enough, it could automatically sleep or shut down.

Then I had another slightly strange idea.

What if I could also get some kind of visual context?

Maybe a quick camera snapshot could help me understand what’s happening around the computer.

But that immediately creates another problem:

privacy.

I’m not sure whether the camera idea is useful enough to justify the security and privacy concerns.

So right now, I’m less interested in building “another remote shutdown app” and more interested in this question:

Can a computer reliably understand when it’s no longer needed?

And if it can, how much control should we give it?

I’m curious how other builders would approach this.

Would you trust software to decide when your computer is truly idle?

What signals would you want to see before shutting it down remotely?

And would a camera snapshot be useful context — or is that already crossing the line?