ha-mcp lets Claude and ChatGPT control Home Assistant through 87 tools
ha-mcp is an MIT project that connects AI assistants to Home Assistant. It offers 87 tools for editing automations, dashboards, scripts and devices. The repository has 6,100 stars and ranked 10th on Trendshift's daily list.
Image: GitHub
Why it mattersA home with many smart devices is now something an AI assistant can set up and change. The owner does not need to write YAML by hand.
A smart home with dozens of devices ends in a YAML file nobody enjoys editing. The repository homeassistant-ai/ha-mcp offers to hand that work to an AI assistant. It is a Model Context Protocol server. It gives Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants direct access to a Home Assistant instance. The project had 6,100 stars on GitHub, 297 forks, and ranked 10th on Trendshift's daily list. It is released under the MIT licence. The author handle is julienld, with four named maintainers.
What the 87 tools do
The README lists 87 tools in categories. Automations and scripts can be created, edited and traced. Dashboards and scenes can be built from a text prompt. Devices can be controlled one at a time or in bulk. Entities, areas, zones and labels can be renamed and relabelled. Backups can be made and restored. History and statistics can be queried. HACS, the community store for Home Assistant add-ons, can be driven from the same place.
The author says the server works with 15 or more clients. The setup wizard lists Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Open WebUI, VSCode and Cursor by name. An MCP client can read the state of every sensor and act on every switch the house knows about.
Six ways to install it
The README names six install paths. The recommended one is the HA-MCP integration from HACS or the Home Assistant Marketplace. That path runs inside the Home Assistant process. Home Assistant 2026.11 and later include the marketplace. The other paths are the Home Assistant add-on, Docker, a PyPI package, a local stdio server, and manual install. Only one method per client is supported at a time. Running two of them at once causes connection errors.
The limits the author flags
Two capabilities carry a beta mark. The YAML editing tool ha_config_set_yaml moved to beta in version 7.3.0. File-system access is also in beta. Both let an agent write to files that hold the whole house setup. The author's choice to mark these beta is a reader's cue that the sharp edges are known.
The project is 14 months old on GitHub, so this week's attention has two separate causes. The Trendshift daily rank pushed it into view. The new Home Assistant 2026.11 marketplace made it one click to install.
What the stars do not say
The 6,100 stars are early attention from the Home Assistant community. No independent test exists of how often an agent breaks a working automation. The author has not published an error rate. A home that reads temperature from eight rooms and heats on a schedule shows an agent mistake within an hour. Try it on one automation first. Keep the backup.
Source
- GitHub, homeassistant-ai/ha-mcp
This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.
Get AI News in your inbox
New developer tools, model and agent releases, and how teams are actually using them to release software. Short, and only when there is something worth reading.