A comprehensive architectural guide for building robust Home Assistant custom integrations and HACS components.
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1. ClawHub CLI
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npx clawhub@latest install ha-integration-patterns
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3. Prompt Installation
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What is Home Assistant Integration Patterns?
This skill provides a technical blueprint for architecting Home Assistant custom integrations, serving as a vital resource within the Openclaw Skills ecosystem. It focuses on the transition from legacy fire-and-forget services to modern, data-rich service responses and authenticated HTTP views. By following these established patterns, developers can build more reliable bridges between AI agents and smart home hardware, ensuring that integrations are future-proof and compliant with official developer standards.
Integrating with Home Assistant requires a deep understanding of its event loop and internal registries. This guide synthesizes best practices for service registration, persistent storage via the Store API, and the implementation of custom HTTP views. It is designed to help developers avoid common pitfalls, such as using unstable private APIs, which often lead to integration failure during core updates.
Home Assistant Integration Patterns Use Cases
- Developing custom HACS integrations for Home Assistant to extend smart home functionality.
- Building API bridges between external AI agents and local smart home hardware.
- Migrating legacy integrations to use the latest Service Response Data patterns (post-HA 2023.7).
- Implementing secure persistent storage for integration settings and device state using official helpers.
How Home Assistant Integration Patterns Works
- Determine the appropriate communication pattern: use Services for actions or HTTP Views for complex data retrieval.
- Configure the integration manifest.json and define service schemas in services.yaml to support modern response structures.
- Implement the service handler in Python, utilizing the SupportsResponse.ONLY or SupportsResponse.OPTIONAL parameters to return data to the caller.
- Set up asynchronous persistent storage using the Home Assistant Store API to ensure configuration survives system restarts.
- Deploy the integration structure within the custom_components directory and verify functionality using the provided testing checklist.
Home Assistant Integration Patterns Setup
Ensure your development environment has access to a Home Assistant instance. Follow these steps to initialize your integration structure:
# Create the directory structure for your integration
mkdir -p custom_components/your_domain
# Initialize the core files
touch custom_components/your_domain/__init__.py
touch custom_components/your_domain/manifest.json
touch custom_components/your_domain/services.yaml
To enable service responses, register your service in your component's initialization logic:
# In your Python integration code
from homeassistant.helpers.service import SupportsResponse
hass.services.async_register(
domain,
"get_data",
handle_service_call,
supports_response=SupportsResponse.ONLY
)
Home Assistant Integration Patterns Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill follows the standard Home Assistant directory and metadata taxonomy for custom components. Data is organized as follows:
| Component | File/Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
| manifest.json | Root | Metadata, dependencies, and versioning info |
| services.yaml | Root | Formal definition of service calls and schemas |
| Storage API | .storage/ | Versioned JSON files for persistent settings |
| config_flow.py | Root | Logic for the UI-based configuration wizard |
| init.py | Root | Core setup and entry point for the integration |
Home Assistant Integration Patterns Advanced Features
- Support for Service Response Data allowing Openclaw Skills to receive structured JSON directly from service calls.
- Implementation of custom HomeAssistantView classes for building authenticated REST endpoints.
- Asynchronous data persistence using the Store API with versioning and automated save/load cycles.
- Migration logic support via async_migrate_entry to handle breaking changes in integration settings.
- Strict adherence to public API standards to ensure compatibility across different Home Assistant core versions.
SKILL.md
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