Indeed, instead of simple speech recognition and word parsing to set a timer, now they throw it into slower AI.

I can still use Google Assistant, I did get an email from Google that they're going to kill it off (the assassination date is 2 months ago, IIRC), but so far Google Assistant still works for me, although it's getting dumber, it failed today when I asked it for "local time in (some city)".

Google's Android Studio Editor has nice enough AI integration, I managed to start vibe-coding a replacement Assistant, that uses on-device speech-to-text, and then I had fun human-coding a parser to understand "set alarm for 8:00" (e.g. if it's 7PM, I want the alarm for 8PM, if it's 10 PM I want it for the next day of course).