Home Assistant CLI

Home Assistant CLI

Control your Home Assistant smart home devices using the official hass-cli tool — a feature-rich command-line interface with auto-completion, event monitoring, and flexible output formatting.

Why This Skill vs. homeassistant (curl-based)?

Choose homeassistant-cli if you want:

• -✅ Auto-completion for entity IDs and services (bash/zsh/fish)
• -✅ Event monitoring in real-time (hass-cli event watch)
• -✅ History queries (hass-cli state history)
• -✅ Better output formatting (table/YAML/JSON with one flag)
• -✅ Interactive exploration (easier to discover entities and services)
• -✅ Comprehensive documentation with examples and troubleshooting

Choose homeassistant (curl) if you want:

• -✅ Zero dependencies (curl + jq are pre-installed)
• -✅ Lightweight and fast
• -✅ Better for scripting and automation
• -✅ No Python requirements

Both work great — this skill is for users who interact frequently with Home Assistant and want a richer CLI experience.

Setup

Before using hass-cli, configure authentication:

1. Generate a long-lived access token in Home Assistant:

- Navigate to your profile: https://your-homeassistant:8123/profile

- Scroll to "Long-Lived Access Tokens"

- Create a new token

2. Set environment variables (add to shell config for persistence):

   export HASS_SERVER=https://homeassistant.local:8123

   export HASS_TOKEN=<your-token>
   

3. Test connection:

   hass-cli info

   

Common Commands

List Entities

List all entities
hass-cli state list

Filter by domain
hass-cli state list light
hass-cli state list switch
hass-cli state list sensor

Get specific entity state
hass-cli state get light.living_room

Control Devices

Turn on/off lights
hass-cli service call light.turn_on --arguments entity_id=light.living_room
hass-cli service call light.turn_off --arguments entity_id=light.living_room

Set brightness (0-255)
hass-cli service call light.turn_on --arguments entity_id=light.bedroom,brightness=128

Turn on/off switches
hass-cli service call switch.turn_on --arguments entity_id=switch.fan
hass-cli service call switch.turn_off --arguments entity_id=switch.fan

Toggle any device
hass-cli service call homeassistant.toggle --arguments entity_id=light.kitchen

List and Call Services

List all services
hass-cli service list

Filter services
hass-cli service list light
hass-cli service list 'home.*toggle'

Get service details (YAML output)
hass-cli -o yaml service list homeassistant.toggle

Work with Scenes

List scenes
hass-cli state list scene

Activate a scene
hass-cli service call scene.turn_on --arguments entity_id=scene.movie_time

Monitor Events

Watch all events
hass-cli event watch

Watch specific event type
hass-cli event watch state_changed
hass-cli event watch automation_triggered

History

Get state history (last 50 minutes)
hass-cli state history --since 50m light.living_room

Multiple entities
hass-cli state history --since 1h light.living_room switch.fan

Output Formats

Control output with -o or --output:

Table (default)
hass-cli state list

YAML
hass-cli -o yaml state get light.living_room

JSON
hass-cli -o json state list light

No headers (for scripting)
hass-cli --no-headers state list

Tips

• -Entity discovery: Use hass-cli state list to find entity IDs
• -Service discovery: Use hass-cli service list to find available services
• -Auto-completion: See [references/autocomplete.md](references/autocomplete.md) for shell setup
• -Troubleshooting: See [references/troubleshooting.md](references/troubleshooting.md)

Examples

See [references/examples.md](references/examples.md) for common automation patterns and use cases.