home-assistant-skills

Use when connecting a coding agent to a Home Assistant instance for the first time or in a fresh session: "connect to Home Assistant", "SSH into HA", set up the Terminal & SSH add-on, generate a long-lived access token, call the REST API, check an entity's state, call a service from the command line, edit configuration or automations YAML over SSH, figure out which of the two access lanes (SSH vs REST) a task needs, or decide whether an MCP integration already covers the task instead. Foundation skill: the other ha-* skills assume its connection pattern and doctrine. Not for writing automations (ha-automations) or building the entity inventory (ha-context-map).

Use when writing, editing, debugging, or verifying Home Assistant automations with an agent: "write an automation that...", turn an English description into automation YAML, edit automations.yaml over SSH, an automation that never fires or fired once and went dead, a service call that silently did nothing, testing with automation.trigger, or reloading automations without restarting Core. Covers the write → check → reload → verify loop and the silent-failure traps (event-entity triggers, dead notify services, no-op writes). Not for the initial connection (ha-connect) or price/LLM-driven triggers (ha-external-triggers).

Use when an agent keeps guessing wrong entity ids, when starting recurring agent work against a Home Assistant instance, or when asked to "map my Home Assistant", "build an entity inventory", "document my smart home", or "why does the agent keep using entities that don't exist". Covers writing and maintaining the instance map file: entity inventory, add-ons, integrations, helpers, notify targets, and a running Gotchas list, plus the provenance checks that keep it honest. Not for making the initial connection (ha-connect) or writing automations (ha-automations).

Use when a Home Assistant automation's "if" is not a device: react to a utility's real-time electricity price (load shedding, price-spike alerts, demand response), or use an LLM as a sensor via ai_task and a camera snapshot for judgment calls (person vs cat vs shadow, "is the garage door actually open in this image"). Covers the save/bump/shed/restore thermostat loop with hysteresis, threshold helpers, the armed-sentinel restore guard, ai_task.generate_data with structured output and camera attachments, and branching automations on LLM fields. Not for basic automation mechanics (ha-automations) or connecting (ha-connect).

Use when [the specific situations, symptoms, and phrases that should trigger this skill]. Pack the words someone would actually type or think when they hit this problem. Describe ONLY when to use it, never summarize the workflow inside. Keep the whole frontmatter under 1024 characters. End by naming what this skill is NOT for, pointing at the sibling skill that covers it.