Most definitely does not need a public URL for Assist in HA. Not sure where you read that.

You’re probably right. At one point, I had a subscription to homeassistant cloud a few years back to use a google nest speaker at the time. I was just going off that I guess. I’ll do some testing and will probably put it back behind tailscale. thanks for the heads up

It sounds like you need a VPN to your internal services if you’re concerned about security.

I’m more so concerned that I set something up incorrectly and would like to be made aware of it in the event someone else noticed