I'm using my own CLI script to control Hue lights[0] and I confirm that you can set the state of your lights directly, without referring to or even knowing the previous one. The API is pretty straightforward.

I suspect that even the vanilla Hue app on Android does that - given the way I often manage to switch the lights before the app UI figures out what's their current state.

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[0] - https://github.com/TeMPOraL/hju