Pp Home Assistant

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Home Assistant — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the home-assistant-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first:

1. Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows:

   npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install home-assistant --cli-only

2. Verify: home-assistant-pp-cli --version
3. Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill.

If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.6 or newer). This installs into $GOPATH/bin (default $HOME/go/bin), so add that directory to $PATH instead:

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/devices/home-assistant/cmd/home-assistant-pp-cli@latest

If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.

Match the useful breadth of hass-cli and ha-mcp, then add preview/apply/verify modes, routine debugging, reference linting, health hotspots, and household exception checks. The same typed Go command tree works for people, scripts, agents, and MCP clients.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI when an agent needs to inspect or control a Home Assistant household, debug routines, maintain a self-hosted installation, or answer questions that span multiple entities and histories. It is especially useful when changes must be previewed, machine-readable, and verified rather than guessed from friendly names.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use this CLI to control Apple's Home app or HomeKit devices that are not bridged into Home Assistant.
• Do not use this CLI to bypass Home Assistant authentication or expose a private instance directly to the public internet.
• Do not use destructive registry, restore, restart, or update commands without reviewing their dry-run or plan output.
• Do not use local-only compound commands before syncing the required resources.

Unique Capabilities

These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.

Safe household action

• mode run — Preview a scene or script, run it, and verify every resulting entity state.

  Use this when an agent must change several household devices safely instead of firing an unverified scene or service call.

  home-assistant-pp-cli mode run movie-night --agent

Household awareness

• house check — See open windows, unlocked locks, lights left on, low batteries, and unavailable safety devices in one answer.

  Use this for immediate household safety and comfort questions that span several entity domains.

  home-assistant-pp-cli house check --agent --select category,entity_id,friendly_name,area,state,severity

• house recap — Review factual household activity, routine failures, presence changes, openings, and unavailable time for a recent period.

  Use this for a compact, evidence-based household summary that remains useful offline.

  home-assistant-pp-cli house recap --since 7d --agent

Routine intelligence

• routine why — Reconstruct why an automation or script failed from traces, state changes, logbook entries, and errors.

  Use this when an agent needs evidence for one failed routine instead of dumping an opaque trace.

  home-assistant-pp-cli routine why automation.movie_night --agent

• routine lint — Find missing entities, unavailable services, disabled dependencies, ambiguous names, and stale routine references.

  Use this before configuration changes or upgrades to catch deterministic breakage before Home Assistant executes a routine.

  home-assistant-pp-cli routine lint --agent

• routine impact — See every automation, script, scene, helper, and service target affected by changing one entity or routine.

  Use this before renaming, disabling, or removing something that other household routines may depend on.

  home-assistant-pp-cli routine impact light.living_room --agent

Self-hosted maintenance

• health hotspots — Group recurring unavailable, stale, low-battery, and disconnecting entities into device, room, integration, and radio hotspots.

  Use this when many entity symptoms may share one failing device, integration, room, or radio network.

  home-assistant-pp-cli health hotspots --agent

• energy standby — Find devices drawing persistent power during explicit periods when related household states show inactivity.

  Use this to turn household energy history into a short list of actionable standby loads.

  home-assistant-pp-cli energy standby --since 7d --agent

Command Reference

calendars — Manage calendars

• home-assistant-pp-cli calendars list — List calendars
• home-assistant-pp-cli calendars list-events — List calendar events

components — Manage components

• home-assistant-pp-cli components — List loaded components

config — Manage config

• home-assistant-pp-cli config get-system-info — Get Home Assistant configuration and version
• home-assistant-pp-cli config validate — Validate Home Assistant configuration

error-log — Manage error log

• home-assistant-pp-cli error-log — Get current error log

events — Manage events

• home-assistant-pp-cli events fire — Fire an event
• home-assistant-pp-cli events list — List event types

history — Manage history

• home-assistant-pp-cli history <timestamp> — Get entity history for a time window

intent — Manage intent

• home-assistant-pp-cli intent — Handle an Assist intent

logbook — Manage logbook

• home-assistant-pp-cli logbook <timestamp> — Get a logbook time window

services — Manage services

• home-assistant-pp-cli services call — Call a Home Assistant service
• home-assistant-pp-cli services list — List service domains and services

states — Manage states

• home-assistant-pp-cli states delete — Remove a custom entity state
• home-assistant-pp-cli states get — Get an entity state
• home-assistant-pp-cli states list — List current entity states
• home-assistant-pp-cli states set — Set a state for a custom entity

template — Manage template

• home-assistant-pp-cli template — Render a Home Assistant template

Finding the right command

When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:

home-assistant-pp-cli which "<capability in your own words>"

which resolves a natural-language capability query to the best matching command from this CLI's curated feature index. Exit code 0 means at least one match; exit code 2 means no confident match — fall back to --help or use a narrower query.

Recipes

Check the home

home-assistant-pp-cli house check --agent --select category,entity_id,friendly_name,area,state,severity

Narrow the whole-home exception report to the fields an agent needs to decide what to do next.

Preview movie night

home-assistant-pp-cli mode run movie-night --dry-run --agent

Resolve the household mode and inspect every action without changing any device.

Explain a failed routine

home-assistant-pp-cli routine why automation.movie_night --agent

Join the relevant trace, state, logbook, and error evidence into one incident timeline.

Review maintenance hotspots

home-assistant-pp-cli health hotspots --agent

Group recurring symptoms into the devices, integrations, areas, or radios most likely to need attention.

Auth Setup

Set HASS_SERVER to your Home Assistant instance URL and HASS_TOKEN to a Long-Lived Access Token created from your Home Assistant profile. The CLI sends the token as a bearer credential to REST and as an access token during WebSocket authentication; it never prints or syncs the token.

Run home-assistant-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.

Agent Mode

Add --agent to any command. Expands to: --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes.

• Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr

• Filterable — --select keeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:

  home-assistant-pp-cli calendars list --agent --select id,name,status

• Previewable — --dry-run shows the request without sending

• Offline-friendly — sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available

• Non-interactive — never prompts, every input is a flag

• Explicit retries — use --idempotent only when an already-existing create should count as success, and use --ignore-missing only when a missing delete target should count as success

Response envelope

Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:

{
  "meta": {"source": "live" | "local", "synced_at": "...", "reason": "..."},
  "results": <data>
}

Parse .results for data and .meta.source to know whether it's live or local. A human-readable N results (live) summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a terminal AND no machine-format flag (--json, --csv, --compact, --quiet, --plain, --select) is set — piped/agent consumers and explicit-format runs get pure JSON on stdout.

Paths and state

Agents should treat the CLI's path resolver as part of the runtime contract:

• Use --home <dir> for one invocation, or set HOME_ASSISTANT_HOME=<dir> to relocate all four path kinds under one root.

• Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge: HOME_ASSISTANT_CONFIG_DIR, HOME_ASSISTANT_DATA_DIR, HOME_ASSISTANT_STATE_DIR, HOME_ASSISTANT_CACHE_DIR.

• Resolution order is per-kind env var, --home, HOME_ASSISTANT_HOME, XDG (XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_STATE_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME), then platform defaults.

• config contains settings like config.toml and profiles. data contains credentials.toml, data.db, cookies, and auth sidecars. state contains persisted queries, jobs, and teach.log. cache contains regenerable HTTP/cache files.

• Stored secrets live in credentials.toml under the data dir. Existing legacy config.toml secrets are read for compatibility and leave config.toml on the first auth write.

• Run home-assistant-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warn to surface path and credential-location warnings. agent-context exposes a schema v4 paths block for agents that need the resolved dirs.

• For MCP, pass relocation through the MCP host config. The MCP binary does not inherit CLI flags:

  {
    "mcpServers": {
      "home-assistant": {
        "command": "home-assistant-pp-mcp",
        "env": {
          "HOME_ASSISTANT_HOME": "/srv/home-assistant"
        }
      }
    }
  }

Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use HOME_ASSISTANT_HOME or per-kind vars as durable fleet levers, and use --home only for a single invocation. Relocation is not reversible by unsetting env vars; move files manually before clearing HOME_ASSISTANT_HOME, or doctor will not find credentials left under the former root.

Automatic learning

This CLI ships a self-capturing learning loop. The CLI does its own bookkeeping: every invocation is journaled locally, a failed flag followed by a corrected retry auto-derives a flag_alias candidate, and a teach on a query family without a playbook auto-synthesizes a playbook_candidate from the session's journal. Your job is judgment only: recall first, act on surfaced candidates, teach the final answer, playbook amend when you observe a correction. You never record failures by hand.

Step 1: recall before any discovery

Before list/search/drill commands on a new user question, run:

home-assistant-pp-cli recall "<user's question>" --agent

The response envelope:

{
  "query": "...",
  "normalized": "<normalized form>",
  "query_entities": ["..."],
  "found": true | false,
  "match_score": 0.0,
  "results": [
    { "resource_id": "...", "resource_type": "...", "venue": "...",
      "confidence": 2, "entity_match": "exact|partial|unknown",
      "source": "taught|preseed|pattern", "warnings": ["..."] }
  ],
  "mismatches": [ /* only when --debug-mismatches */ ],
  "warnings": [ /* top-level */ ],
  "candidates": [
    { "id": 12, "class": "flag_alias | playbook_candidate",
      "summary": "...", "sightings": 3, "last_seen": "...",
      "rationale": "...",
      "next_action": ["<trial command>", "home-assistant-pp-cli learnings confirm 12"] }
  ],
  "playbook": {
    "query_family": "...",
    "playbook": {
      "steps": [ { "cmd": "<command with {slot} substitution>", "purpose": "..." } ],
      "entity_slots": ["$ENTITY"],
      "expected_tool_calls": 3
    },
    "slots_resolved": { "$ENTITY": { "token": "<live token>", "canonical": "<canonical>" } },
    "notes": "<workarounds + gotchas for this query family>"
  },
  "notes": "<duplicate surface for non-playbook callers>"
}

Empty-store short-circuit: if the store has no learnings, playbooks, or candidates yet (recall finds nothing and learnings list and learnings candidates are both empty), skip recall for the rest of this session instead of taxing every query; resume recall-first once something has been taught.

Step 2: decision tree

Read candidates, playbook, notes, results[0], and warnings in that order:

if Candidates present (warnings include "candidates_present"):
    -> candidates are try-then-confirm, never facts. Follow each candidate's
       two-step next_action verbatim: run the trial command first, then run
       `learnings confirm <id>` only after the trial verified the behavior.
       Reject a wrong candidate with `learnings reject <id>`.
    -> NEVER re-teach something recall surfaced as a candidate; confirm or
       reject that candidate instead of teaching a duplicate.
    -> candidates ride alongside playbooks and resource hits, not instead of
       them; continue with the branches below after acting on them.

if Playbook present:
    -> READ Playbook.notes verbatim FIRST (workarounds + gotchas the CLI surface doesn't expose)
    -> replay Playbook.steps in order, substituting Playbook.slots_resolved entries
       for the entity slot tokens. If a step's slot is unresolved, fall back to
       discovery for that step only.
    -> the Playbook's expected_tool_calls is a budget; if you find yourself running
       materially more, record the divergence via `home-assistant-pp-cli playbook amend`
       at end-of-session.

elif Notes present (no Playbook):
    -> read Notes verbatim before any discovery step; they carry known gotchas
       for this query family even when no structured choreography exists yet.

elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "exact" AND Results[0].Confidence >= 2:
    -> skip discovery; fetch live data for Results[*].ResourceID in parallel

elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "partial":
    -> candidate hint, NOT a hit; read the resource title to validate before trusting

elif (any row in Mismatches[] when --debug-mismatches was passed):
    -> treat as cold start; the stored learning is for a different entity
       (different canonical resolved from query_entities)

else:  // Found == false, no playbook, no notes
    -> cold start; run discovery normally; teach the answer afterward (Step 4).
       If the family has no playbook yet, that teach auto-synthesizes a
       playbook candidate from this session's journal - you do not need to
       record one by hand.

Playbook and Notes are orthogonal to the per-resource path. A recall response can carry both a Playbook AND a Results[] hit - use both: the Playbook tells you which choreography to run; the resource hits short-circuit specific steps. Default to skipping mismatches; pass --debug-mismatches only when investigating cold-start surprises.

Candidate judgment details: learnings confirm <id> prints the candidate's full payload before materializing it - check that the printed payload matches the behavior you verified. learnings reject <id> tombstones the derivation signature so the same candidate does not resurface. The envelope carries only the few candidates worth acting on now; home-assistant-pp-cli learnings candidates lists the full open set.

Graceful degradation: if learnings confirm is an unknown command, you are driving an older binary - ignore the candidates guidance and follow the rest of the protocol.

Step 3: always read warnings

• low_confidence: row exists at confidence<2. Treat as a hint, not a skip-discovery hit.
• resource_not_in_store: the local store doesn't have the resource the learning points at. The match validator couldn't classify entities — direct-fetch and re-evaluate.
• cross_alias_match (per-result): the row was taught under a different alias and matched the live query's canonical via entity_lookups (e.g., a "USA" teach satisfying a "United States" recall). Trust the resource_id.
• similar_shape_different_entity:<canonical> (top-level): a structurally matching row exists but its canonical entity differs from the live query's. Treated as cold start; the warning carries the conflicting canonical as a hint, but the row is NOT promoted into Results.
• ambiguous_alias (top-level): a single query entity resolved to multiple canonicals (e.g., "Cards" → Arizona Cardinals + St. Louis Cardinals). Surface the ambiguity from context before committing to a resource.
• candidates_present (top-level): the envelope carries a candidates section. Handle it via the candidates branch in Step 2 before anything else.
• lookup_refresh_available (top-level): an entity in the query has no lookup row yet, but synced data could provide one. Run home-assistant-pp-cli sync to refresh entity lookups.
• Top-level no_learnings_for_query_family: the table had no rows above the Jaccard floor. Pure cold start.