Intents do not incorporate Labels

[andrewvaughan]

If I understand correctly, Labels are intended to rectify long-standing requests for organizing areas, devices, entities, etc in "non-standard" ways:

"Labels in Home Assistant allow grouping elements irrespective of their physical location or type. Labels can be assigned to areas, devices, entities, automations, scenes, scripts, and helpers. Labels can be used in automations and scripts as a target for actions. Labels can also be used to filter data."

If true, the Intent slot combinations do not support labels in this manner.

For example, if I have two lamps in my "living room" area, but also want to group them by "couch" with a label, I would expect to be able to perform an Intent along the lines of:

Turn off the couch lights or even just Turn off the couch

As a new user, I may be misunderstanding the intent (pun intended) of labels here; if so, please let me know.

It seems like there would need to be a permutation of "label" around the existing intents, to me:

Existing:

Slot combination	Example
name only	table light
area only	kitchen
area and name	living room reading light
area and domain	kitchen lights
area and device class	bathroom humidity
device class and domain	carbon dioxide sensors

Permutations:

Slot combination	Example
label only	left side
label and name	left side reading light
label and domain	left side lights
label and device class	left side humidity
label and area	upstairs bathroom
label, area, and name	upstairs bathroom ceiling light
label, area, and domain	upstairs bathroom lights
label, area, and device class	upstairs bathroom humidity
area and label	pool recirculation
area, label, and name	pool recirculation pump
area, label, and domain	pool hot tub lights
area, label, and device class	pool hot tub temperature

[TheFes]

You can group the two lights in a light group, and that light group can be exposed to Assist.

[tetele]

IMHO this is a good idea, but it is not implemented yet and it requires support in the HA core.

@synesthesiam what do you think?

[andrewvaughan]

You can group the two lights in a light group, and that light group can be exposed to Assist.

Light groups can't be nested though, can they? For example if I wanted to "turn on the couch lights" but also be able to "turn on the living room lights" that the couch is in, that's not possible today, correct?

With labeling, I would expect the Group to be "living room" with the specific lights having the "couch" label, for example.

[TheFes]

You can put a light group in another light group, so they can be nested.
They can also be put in an area, which I would expect to be the target with a sentence like turn on the living room lights

[synesthesiam]

Light groups is the preferred solution for now.

Labels would be interesting, but there are many open questions:

• How is exposure handled? Can I target a label if only some of the entities are exposed?
• What action should be taken when a label contains entities from multiple domains? If I "turn off" a label, does it also close associated covers?
• What is the priority if a label shares a name with an area, device, entity, or alias?