Home Assistant

Home Assistant is where the lab overlaps with the house. It is less about collecting every possible smart device and more about making the repeated parts of the house feel reliable and boring.

The best automations are the ones that disappear into the background. This page keeps track of the integrations, helper entities, and backup decisions that make that possible.

What Belongs Here

• Core integrations that the house actually depends on.
• Automations that should keep working without cloud services.
• Helper entities and naming conventions that make the setup easier to maintain.
• Backup and restore notes for upgrades, device swaps, and broken experiments.

Setup

Home Assistant OS runs as a VM because the appliance model is the least surprising path. Add-ons, backups, and supervisor-managed updates are part of the reason to use it instead of rebuilding the stack as loose containers.

• Keep secrets out of automations where possible.
• Add integrations slowly enough that broken devices are easy to identify.
• Back up before major version updates.
• Prefer local control for anything that affects lights, access, or comfort.