Pet Care Tracker

Dog Care Tracker

Record and query a dog's walks and feedings. Useful when automated detection (cameras, occupancy sensors) misses an event and the tracker needs a manual override, and for quick status checks during the day.

When to Use

Activate when the user reports a walk or feeding in past or just-completed tense:

• "I walked Buddy this morning for 25 minutes"
• "Just fed Buddy breakfast"
• "He had his evening walk"
• "We got back from a 30-minute lunch walk"
• "I gave Buddy dinner around 6"

Or asks about today's walk / feeding status:

• "Was Buddy fed this morning?"
• "What time did Buddy eat dinner?"
• "Did Buddy get his midday walk?"
• "How long was his morning walk today?"

When NOT to use

• Future-tense plans ("I'll walk the dog later", "We should feed Buddy soon")
• Training, behavior, vet, or general dog-care advice
• Anything not in the named operations below

Period and meal vocabulary

Map fuzzy time language to canonical values before calling the operations.

If ambiguous (e.g. just "earlier today"), infer from current local hour:

• before 11 → morning / breakfast
• 11–16 → midday (no breakfast/dinner mapping; ask)
• 16–20 → dinner only (no walk mapping; ask)
• 20+ → evening / dinner

If still ambiguous, ask the user to disambiguate.

Common Operations

Read the dog's name

Before responding to the user with a sentence that includes the dog's name, fetch it from HA. One fetch per assistant turn is sufficient — reuse the result in all confirmations and answers in that response.

DOG_NAME=$(curl -fsS -H "Authorization: Bearer $HA_TOKEN" \
  "$HA_URL/api/states/input_text.dog_name" | jq -r .state)

Mark a walk

curl -fsS -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"op":"mark_walked","period":"<period>","duration_minutes":<N>}' \
  "$HA_URL/api/webhook/$HA_WEBHOOK_DOG_CARE"

<period> is one of morning, midday, evening. <N> is duration in minutes — default to 20 if the user didn't say.

Mark a feeding

Always include all three fields in the JSON body: op, meal, and at_time. Don't drop at_time — when the user didn't say a specific time, send it as the empty string "" and HA will stamp the current time.

When the user mentioned a specific time:

curl -fsS -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"op":"mark_fed","meal":"breakfast","at_time":"07:30"}' \
  "$HA_URL/api/webhook/$HA_WEBHOOK_DOG_CARE"

When the user did NOT mention a specific time (use empty string for at_time):

curl -fsS -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"op":"mark_fed","meal":"breakfast","at_time":""}' \
  "$HA_URL/api/webhook/$HA_WEBHOOK_DOG_CARE"

meal is one of breakfast, dinner.

at_time is either HH:MM 24-hour in HA's local timezone, or the empty string "". Conversion table:

Query walk status

curl -fsS -H "Authorization: Bearer $HA_TOKEN" \
  "$HA_URL/api/states/input_select.dog_<period>_walk_status" \
  | jq -r .state

Returns one of Walked, Due, Overdue.

Query walk duration

curl -fsS -H "Authorization: Bearer $HA_TOKEN" \
  "$HA_URL/api/states/input_datetime.dog_<period>_walk_duration" \
  | jq -r .state

Returns HH:MM:SS. Convert to minutes: HH*60 + MM. A value of 00:00:00 means "not recorded yet".

Query meal status

curl -fsS -H "Authorization: Bearer $HA_TOKEN" \
  "$HA_URL/api/states/input_select.dog_<meal>_status" \
  | jq -r .state

Returns one of Fed, Due, Overdue.

Query meal time

curl -fsS -H "Authorization: Bearer $HA_TOKEN" \
  "$HA_URL/api/states/input_datetime.dog_<meal>_time" \
  | jq -r .state

Returns HH:MM:SS in HA's local timezone. A value of 00:00:00 means "not recorded yet".

Response format

After a successful write, confirm to the user using $DOG_NAME (from "Read the dog's name"):

• "Marked $DOG_NAME's morning walk: 25 min."
• "Marked $DOG_NAME as fed: dinner."

After a query, give a single-sentence answer:

• "$DOG_NAME was fed at 7:23 this morning."
• "$DOG_NAME's morning walk was 28 minutes."
• "$DOG_NAME's evening walk hasn't been logged yet." (when status is Due/Overdue)

If a query returns Due or Overdue, the dog hasn't been walked/fed for that period yet — say so plainly. If the user asks "did he eat?" and status is Overdue, the honest answer is "Not yet — and breakfast is overdue."

Notes

• Times are in HA's local timezone. When inferring period from "this morning", trust the user's local time as reported by the host clock.
• 00:00:00 means "not recorded yet" for any duration or time helper. The HA-side resets clear them at midnight (and at midday for evening duration / dinner time).
• Writes are idempotent for status. Marking already-Walked re-confirms the state but does not change the recorded duration — so a manual "I walked him for 5 min" earlier won't be overwritten by a later detection-driven 25-min walk in the same period. If the user wants to overwrite, they can re-run the mark with a new duration.
• Use the dog_* namespace literally in entity IDs, not the actual dog's name. The dog's name only appears in input_text.dog_name and in your prose responses — the entity is input_select.dog_morning_walk_status, whatever the dog is called.
• Writes go through the recipes above; reads come back from the read recipes above. Each operation has exactly one recipe; use it as written.

Errors

• A curl returns non-zero or an HTTP error → report the exact error and which operation failed.
• $HA_URL, $HA_TOKEN, or $HA_WEBHOOK_DOG_CARE is unset → the skill is not configured; point the user to README.md.
• A read returns an empty or unknown state → say the value has not been recorded, and do not substitute a guess.
• The period or meal is still ambiguous after the inference table → ask the user which one they mean.

Always ask the user for guidance when there is an error; do not proactively try to resolve errors yourself.