Getting Started

Introduction

This page explains the basics behind HASS.Agent: What it is and what it can do. We'll be using the abbreviation HA for Home Assistant, so when HA is mentioned, it refers to your Home Assistant instance.

Home Assistant Glossary

You can use Home Assistant's glossary to look up words you don't know yet.

Getting started Video

EverythingSmartHome's youtube video is a great guide to get you started: Control Your Windows PC With Home Assistant!. Note that it is based on an older version(v1), so for instance the mentioned missing 'actionable notifications' are already implemented.

Overview

In general, HASS.Agent is a client (companion) application for Home Assistant. It's being developed for Windows, with Windows 10 and 11 (fully up-to-date) in mind - previous versions or unpatched systems may work.

The communication goes both ways: HASS.Agent can send data to HA, and HA can send data to HASS.Agent. In other words: you can use HASS.Agent to control and inform HA, and you can use HA to control HASS.Agent.

Main Functionalities

Function	Description	Usage Examples
Commands	Control your PC from HA.	Lock your session, open notepad, or emulate a keypress.
Sensors	Send PC telemetry data to HA.	CPU load, webcam status, or user activity.
Quick Actions	Control and view any HA entity from your taskbar or a hotkey.	Turn on lights or open the garage door.
Notifications	Send notifications from HA to Windows, includes actionable buttons and images.	Display an image of who's at the front door.
Media Player	Control your PC from HA as if it were a media player.	See what Spotify song's playing, or send a text-to-speech message.
WebView	Show any webpage or URL, without launching a browser.	Show a doorbell camera stream when the doorbell is pressed.
Satellite Service	Process commands and sensors even when no user is logged in.	Shutdown your PC at any time, locked or not.

We'll go into each function in depth a bit later on. For now lets get HASS.Agent installed and connected.