name: home-assistant-best-practices
description: >
Best practices for Home Assistant automations, helpers, scripts, and device controls.

TRIGGER THIS SKILL WHEN:
- Creating or editing HA automations, scripts, or scenes
- Writing automation conditions or triggers
- Creating template sensors or binary sensors
- Using wait_template or wait_for_trigger
- Choosing between device triggers and state triggers
- Selecting automation modes (single/restart/queued/parallel)
- Setting up Zigbee button/remote automations (ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT)
- Deciding whether to use a built-in helper vs template sensor

SYMPTOMS THAT TRIGGER THIS SKILL:
- Agent defaults to Jinja2 templates where native constructs exist
- Agent creates template sensors for simple aggregation (sum/min/max/mean)
- Agent uses template conditions instead of native state/numeric_state conditions
- Agent uses wait_template instead of wait_for_trigger
- Agent uses device_id instead of entity_id in triggers/actions
- Agent chooses wrong automation mode (e.g., single for motion lights)

Home Assistant Best Practices

Core principle: Use native Home Assistant constructs wherever possible. Templates bypass validation, fail silently at runtime, and make debugging opaque.

Decision Workflow

Follow this sequence when creating any automation:

1. Check for native condition/trigger

Before writing any template, check references/automation-patterns.md for native alternatives.

Common substitutions:
- {{ states('x') | float > 25 }} → numeric_state condition with above: 25
- {{ is_state('x', 'on') and is_state('y', 'on') }} → condition: and with state conditions
- {{ now().hour >= 9 }} → condition: time with after: "09:00:00"
- wait_template: "{{ is_state(...) }}" → wait_for_trigger with state trigger

2. Check for built-in helper

Before creating a template sensor, check references/helper-selection.md.

Common substitutions:
- Sum/average multiple sensors → min_max integration
- Binary any-on/all-on logic → group helper
- Rate of change → derivative integration
- Cross threshold detection → threshold integration
- Consumption tracking → utility_meter helper

3. Select correct automation mode

Default single mode is often wrong. See references/automation-patterns.md#automation-modes.

4. Use entity_id over device_id

device_id breaks when devices are re-added. See references/device-control.md.

Exception: Zigbee2MQTT autodiscovered device triggers are acceptable.

5. For Zigbee buttons/remotes

• ZHA: Use event trigger with device_ieee (persistent)
• Z2M: Use device trigger (autodiscovered) or mqtt trigger

See references/device-control.md#zigbee-buttonremote-patterns.

Critical Anti-Patterns

Reference Files

Read these when you need detailed information: