Home Assistant automation with PicoClaw

Home Assistant is great at collecting events and controlling devices; PicoClaw is great at cheap, always‑on AI logic that can run on a Raspberry Pi or small server. This guide connects the two using webhooks so you can build automations like “explain why the energy bill spiked” or “summarise motion alerts each night”.

1. Architecture overview

The pattern is simple:

• Home Assistant automation sends a webhook when something happens (door opens, scene changes, sensor threshold is crossed).
• PicoClaw receives the request, calls your configured LLM provider, and returns a text response.
• Home Assistant uses that text in a notification, logbook entry, or scene decision.

2. Expose a PicoClaw webhook endpoint

Configure PicoClaw so it can receive HTTP requests from Home Assistant. You can run PicoClaw on the same machine or another device on your LAN.

Once the endpoint is available, Home Assistant will send JSON containing useful fields (entity IDs, states, attributes) that you can pass into your LLM prompts.

3. Create a Home Assistant webhook automation

In Home Assistant, create an automation that triggers on the conditions you care about and posts to your PicoClaw webhook URL. Include the relevant entities and state in the payload so PicoClaw can generate a meaningful response.

4. Example Home Assistant AI automations

• Energy usage summaries – send daily sensor readings to PicoClaw and get a short explanation of trends.
• Security recaps – combine motion sensor and door events into one nightly summary message.
• Comfort suggestions – based on temperature and occupancy sensors, have PicoClaw suggest scene changes.

Because PicoClaw is extremely lightweight, you can run these AI automations on the same Raspberry Pi that powers your Home Assistant instance.

For more background on running PicoClaw on small devices, see the Raspberry Pi AI assistant guide.