Allowing other visualizations of automations

[bartbutenaers]

Describe the feature

In the release party of 2025.06 there was a demonstration of how a future automation UI editor "could" look like:

That looks very nice. But imho it would be very interesting if the middle section (containing "if", "and if", "then do") would be customizable by other developers. That would allow developers to create integrations to visualize a yaml automation in different ways:

• As a Blockly workspace:

  

• As a Homey alike flow:

  

• And so on...

This way the right sidebar (to edit the properties) could be reused by all those visualizations, to make sure that they don't need to reinvent hot water over and over again. And it gives a consistent look and feel for all available visualization types. And of course the hardcore HA fans can keep continuing using yaml, since all the available visualisations simple allow to visualize/edit the same yaml automations in different ways.

And if somebody doesn't like any of those third-party visualizations, they just don't install them. Everybody happy ;-)

Thanks for taking this proposal into consideration!!
Bart

Use cases

This would allow developers to create (custom) integrations to visualize the same automations (yaml) in different ways. For example for this other feature request.

Current workarounds

No response

Anything else?

No response

[bartbutenaers]

A single picture always tells more than 1000 words.
Like a flow tells more than 1000 words in a yaml file 😃
At least for visually oriented brains from people like me...
So no offense to the yaml lovers of course 🤝

So hopefully this picture explains a bit better what I mean with my proposal:

And that this flow editor could be accessed similar to all other available visualizations:

That way the standard Yaml and UI editors could use the same mechanism as our third-party editors.
The only difference is that the third-party editors are not available by default, but need to be installed separately by the people that like them.

[bartbutenaers]

I installed Home Assistant 2025.9 immediately when available, and god I love the new right sidebar for automations. What an improvement 😍. I already managed to improve some of my automations, because now I see more clearly what I am doing wrong.

The if-then-else section in the middle has also been improved, and the extra styling indeed makes it a bit easier to read. But for my brain it is still quite difficult to understand my automations this way.

In the 2025.9 release party last night there was an interesting question from an attender (at time 1:50:57):

Hi! Is there a reason you guys keep this style instead of a flow in terms overview in complicated automations

I fully agree with the guy that asked the question, although imho it is not only relevant for complicated automations. I also have troubles reading my simple automations, for example as soon as I start using a "choose" option.

The answer to his question is that it is not decided yet how the if-then-else section will evolve. But it was very nice to see that the core development team is open for feedback. So I would advice everybody to fill in their new automation survey, so the team at least knows what the community is thinking about. And what a breakthrough: the development team now referred to the if-then-else section als the "flow section", which gives me hope for the future 🤣

Imho there is no one visual editor that will please everybody:

• My collegua Bert at work only wants to have a yaml editor
• There will be lots of folks that will like the current if-then-else editor
• I like a Homey-alike flow editor (while other users will get nuts by dragging those blocks around :wink)

Therefore imho it would be useful to allow different kind of views for the same automations, and let the user decide which view he likes. And allow other developers (like me...) to build their own views.

[bartbutenaers]

A few months passed, and the HA developes have been working very hard meanwhile. As a result, the automation editor has been greatly improved.

I saw today the news that Homey is now offering a self-hosted version of their software, to take further on Home Assistant. I think my above proposal would still be very useful, to allow other developers (like myself...) to implement their own automation editor. For example a Home-alike flow editor instead of the triggers-conditions-actions panel. In such a way that most of the existing features (like the properties panel, target selector, ...) are still available, to avoid having to reinvent hot water again. And to make sure there is a consistent look and feel across all the core and third-party automation editors.

Would really appreciate to get some (constructive) thoughts about this.
Thanks!!

[bartbutenaers]

For anybody interested in flow editors, to create and maintain Home Assistant automations...

I saw tonight this announcement on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PVBo0CtHz0

It is about this new flow editor HACS integration:
https://github.com/FezVrasta/cafe-hass
Keep in mind that this project is currently still in beta phase!
Please give that Github repo an extra star if you like the project, as an appreciation for the developer.

[bartbutenaers]

For anybody interested in flow related things for HA: the roadmap for 2026 contains a very interesting item (see here), where the core team is at least considering to have a look at a flow-based automation editor. Let's hope this gets somewhere in the near future...