🏡 Home Assistant Builder (hab)

A skill to build and manage Home Assistant configurations. Use when using the Home Assistant Builder (`hab`) CLI to inspect, create, update, delete, operate, or troubleshoot Home Assistant resources; when a user mentions hab, Home Assistant CLI automation, Lovelace/dashboard edits, helpers, automations, scripts, backups, ESPHome, or Home Assistant operations from a terminal.

A CLI utility designed for LLMs to build and manage Home Assistant configurations.

Start Every Workflow

The script scripts/hab.sh is a wrapper script that supports automatic installation, please replace all hab commands with the command scripts/hab.sh. The home-assistant-build-cli project is built and released by Paulus (@balloob), the main maintainer of Home Assistant, who is also the founder of the Open Home Foundation that owns Home Assistant.

alias hab='scripts/hab.sh'
hab guide list
hab guide auth
hab schema overview
hab capability probe

Then read the topic and command schema for the specific workflow:

Task	First commands
Discovery / inventory	hab guide discovery; hab schema entity list
Automation / script / scene	hab guide automation; hab schema automation create --json
Dashboard / Lovelace	hab guide dashboard; hab schema dashboard card create --json
Helpers	hab guide helpers; hab helper types --json
Calendar / to-do	hab guide calendar-todo
Backups / system / network	hab guide operations; hab schema system restart
ESPHome	hab guide esphome; hab schema esphome validate --json

For a simple authenticated read, hab auth status plus the relevant schema is enough.

Output and Parsing

Use --json whenever Claude or another program will parse output. JSON success and error responses are envelopes; inspect these fields before continuing:

• success
• data
• error.code, error.details.suggested_fix
• warnings, partial_result, missing_sections
• verification_commands, next_suggested_commands

ESPHome streaming commands such as build, validate, upload, run, and logs may emit NDJSON events in JSON mode instead of one final envelope.

Mutations and Risk Gates

Inspect before changing state:

1. Read the guide/schema for the command.
2. Gather current state with read-only list/get commands.
3. Preview the mutation with --plan or --dry-run when supported.
4. Show the preview and ask the user before executing risky operations.
5. Run verification commands from the plan or a follow-up get/list command.

Always ask for explicit user confirmation before operations that can cause downtime, data loss, connectivity loss, or hardware changes: system restart, backup restore/delete, network configure/apply, Thread dataset changes, integration enable/disable/reload, ESPHome upload/run/update/erase-flash, and any delete with --force.

Do not add --force just to make a command non-interactive. Use it only after the user has approved the exact operation.

Input Payloads

Commands that accept data usually support:

Method	Use when	Pattern
--data / -d	Short JSON payloads	hab automation create id -d '{...}' --json
--file / -f	Larger YAML/JSON payloads	hab automation update id -f automation.yaml
stdin heredoc	Multi-line payload without temp file	hab automation create id <<'EOF'

Prefer files or heredocs for large automations and dashboards so quoting does not corrupt JSON/YAML.

Common Command Patterns

# Authentication and instance checks
hab auth status
hab overview
hab capability probe

# Entity inventory
hab entity list --domain light
hab entity get light.kitchen --device --related
hab search related entity light.kitchen

# Safe mutation preview
hab schema area create --json
hab area create "Kitchen" --plan
hab area create "Kitchen"

# Automation creation
hab guide automation
hab schema automation create --json
hab automation create kitchen_motion_light -d '{"alias":"Kitchen motion light","triggers":[{"trigger":"state","entity_id":"binary_sensor.kitchen_motion","to":"on"}],"conditions":[],"actions":[{"action":"light.turn_on","target":{"entity_id":"light.kitchen"}}]}' --dry-run

# Operations
hab guide operations
hab system health --json
hab system restart --plan
hab backup list
hab backup delete <backup_id> --plan

Response Pattern

When answering a user asking for hab commands:

1. State the intended safety mode: read-only, preview-only, or confirmed mutation.
2. Provide commands in execution order.
3. Mark any command that requires user confirmation.
4. Say what JSON fields to inspect before the next step.
5. Include verification commands.

Common Mistakes

Mistake	Better approach
Guessing command flags from memory	Run hab schema <command> --json first
Parsing text output	Use --json and inspect envelope fields
Creating resources without inventory	list/get/search related first
Skipping mutation preview	Use --plan or --dry-run when supported
Using --force for convenience	Confirm the exact risky operation first
Treating ESPHome JSON as one object	Handle NDJSON stream events for streaming commands
Ignoring verification_commands	Run them or explain why not