More power, less complexity
The new triggers and conditions make Home Assistant automations more approachable, more powerful, and easier to extend without taking away the power underneath.
Franck Nijhof (Frenck)
Personal writing from Franck Nijhof, Home Assistant Lead, GitHub Star, and open sourcerer, about smart homes, open source, GitHub, practical AI, and building things that survive real life.
Latest posts
Open source won. That is why LGTM stopped being enough
Open source became critical infrastructure. That success changed what pull request review means, especially for projects like Home Assistant that millions of households now depend on.
Automation modes in Home Assistant: Why the default isn't your friend
Home Assistant automation modes decide what happens when an automation is triggered again while it is still running. Here is when to use single, restart, queued, or parallel.
A smart home will not save the planet
A smart home is not magic sustainability dust. The useful part is measurement, local control, and keeping good devices useful longer.
Open source was not ready for AI-speed contributions
AI did not create the maintainer burden problem in open source. It accelerated it. Contributors are being amplified, but maintainers are still the verification bottleneck.
Your editor is a supply chain security risk now
Developer tooling is part of supply chain security now. Editors, extensions, CLIs, language servers, and AI tools live next to the credentials maintainers use to publish software.
So... can Home Assistant run DOOM?
It started with a DOOM t-shirt at a meetup. The real question? Can Home Assistant run DOOM? Two hours later, I had a fully working DOOM integration for Home Assistant and was fighting demons on my smart home dashboard.
The chaos begins: Building my Home Assistant smart home from scratch
We got the keys 48 hours ago. The house is full of boxes, chaos, and smart home equipment I don't know how to control yet. This is the real journey of building a Home Assistant smart home from scratch. No polish, just authentic discovery and inevitable failures.
Moving to a new smart home: The exciting agony of not having the keys yet
I'm moving to a new place mid-December, and I can't sleep. Not from stress, but from the overwhelming excitement of building a smart home from scratch. Where do I even start? My brain won't shut up about all the possibilities.
Renaming Home Assistant add-ons to apps
New Home Assistant users constantly hit the same confusion: add-ons or integrations? Both sound like things you add, but serve different purposes. I just proposed renaming add-ons to apps. It's more than terminology, it's about clarity for millions of users.
I'm not streaming anymore (At least not anytime soon)
My streams aren't coming back. But what's coming instead might be better: vlogs from GitHub Universe and CES 2026, a complete smart home build documentary, and "Ask Frenck: Unfiltered", where I answer the hard questions about Home Assistant with brutal honesty. My channel. My views. No BS.
GitHub Actions finally supports YAML anchors (but not really)
After 4 years of waiting, GitHub finally added YAML anchors to GitHub Actions. Then I read the docs: no merge keys. They shipped half the feature, gained all the complexity costs, and missed the entire point. Here's what actually works and why I'm disappointed.
Confessions about my smart home
People assume my smart home is a futuristic, perfectly automated masterpiece. The reality? Let’s just say… it’s time for some confessions. 😰
CES 2025: My takeaways for the connected smart home.
I've visited the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the beginning of 2025. I spent many hours exploring the "smart home" areas of the expo, and this is what I've noticed and learned about the future of the connected smart home.
Unboxing the HomeWizard Plug-In Battery – A Plug-and-Play Home Battery? 🔋
A home battery that you can install yourself. No electrician, no complicated setup—just plug it in, and it works (allegedly).