The ST Cloud will no longer run Groovy in the future, and customers Will no longer be allowed to create code that runs in the ST cloud. so this assumption is incorrect. When Webcore stops working (and that is a when, not an if), then all previously existing pistons will also stop working. So that’s why people are suggesting that you get prepared for that.
There is a competing hub, Hubitat, from a company founded by some former smartthings users who wanted local operation and more customer control. It does run groovy and a form of webcore. So some people are already planning to run both hubs in order to preserve their groovy code.
In the future architecture, custom code has to be hosted by the author on their own server (and can be written in any language you like) and then communicate with smartthings through the API. Typically but not exclusively using MQTT.
The options for writing rules that will continue to work on the new platform are:
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create rules through the existing smartthings app using the built-in automation creator
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create rules through the new “rules API“ which has a lot of webcore like features, but is still in development and not fully documented. For more information see:
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write any code you like, using any language you like, host it yourself, and communicate to smartthings using MQTT.
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continue to write groovy code and either run it now on Hubitat or plan to do so in the future
Any or all of these will work now and in the future. But webcore in the ST cloud is going away sometime this year.