modbender Home Assistant Assist
Control smart home devices by passing natural language to Home Assistant's Assist (Conversation) API. Fire and forget — trust Assist to handle intent parsing, entity resolution, and execution.
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when the user wants to control or query any smart home device. If it's in Home Assistant, Assist can handle it.
How It Works
Pass the user's request directly to Assist:
curl -s -X POST "$HASS_SERVER/api/conversation/process" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $HASS_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text": "USER REQUEST HERE", "language": "en"}'
Trust Assist. It handles:
- Intent parsing
- Fuzzy entity name matching
- Area-aware commands
- Execution
- Error responses
Handling Responses
Just relay what Assist says. The response.speech.plain.speech field contains the human-readable result.
"Turned on the light"→ Success, tell the user"Sorry, I couldn't understand that"→ Assist couldn't parse it"Sorry, there are multiple devices called X"→ Ambiguous name
Don't over-interpret. If Assist says it worked, it worked. Trust the response.
When Assist Returns an Error
Only if Assist returns an error (response_type: "error"), you can suggest HA-side improvements:
| Error | Suggestion |
|---|---|
no_intent_match |
"HA didn't recognize that command" |
no_valid_targets |
"Try checking the entity name in HA, or add an alias" |
| Multiple devices | "There may be duplicate names — consider adding unique aliases in HA" |
These are suggestions for improving HA config, not skill failures. The skill did its job — it passed the request to Assist.
Setup
Set environment variables in OpenClaw config:
{
"env": {
"HASS_SERVER": "https://your-homeassistant-url",
"HASS_TOKEN": "your-long-lived-access-token"
}
}
Generate a token: Home Assistant → Profile → Long-Lived Access Tokens → Create Token
API Reference
Endpoint
POST /api/conversation/process
Note: Use /api/conversation/process, NOT /api/services/conversation/process.
Request
{
"text": "turn on the kitchen lights",
"language": "en"
}
Response
{
"response": {
"speech": {
"plain": {"speech": "Turned on the light"}
},
"response_type": "action_done",
"data": {
"success": [{"name": "Kitchen Light", "id": "light.kitchen"}],
"failed": []
}
}
}
Philosophy
- Trust Assist — It knows the user's HA setup better than we do
- Fire and forget — Pass the request, relay the response
- Don't troubleshoot — If something doesn't work, suggest HA config improvements
- Keep it simple — One API call, natural language in, natural language out