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FAQ
Common questions about TaskMate. If yours isn't answered here, please open an issue.
No. TaskMate is fully local-first. All child, chore, reward, and points data is stored inside your Home Assistant instance under .storage/. Nothing leaves your network.
Home Assistant 2024.1 or newer (matches the value in hacs.json).
Your normal Home Assistant backups include the .storage/ directory, which is where TaskMate keeps everything. Nothing extra required.
- Specific days: show this chore on the selected days of the week (e.g. Monday / Wednesday / Friday).
- Recurring: rolling window — show again every 2 days / weekly / every 2 weeks / monthly / every 3 months / every 6 months after the last completion.
Yes — use one-shot chores. A one-shot chore is available the day it's created and automatically expires at midnight. Each assigned child has their own chance to complete it.
Yes. Set visibility_entity, visibility_state, and visibility_operator on a chore. For example: show "Feed the cat" only when binary_sensor.cat_food_bowl is off.
In wallet mode, the Claim button is disabled and shows "Not enough points" on hover. In pool mode, the Redeem button only appears once the pool is full.
Yes — this is the main use case for the per-reward pool_enabled toggle. Short-term treats stay as wallet rewards (instant claim); long-term goals become pool rewards (savings jars).
Any pending claims for it are removed, any pool allocations are cleared (points are not refunded to children), and the reward disappears from every rewards card.
No. It's entirely opt-in — both per-reward (admin toggle) and per-card (enable_pool_mode: true). Existing v2.x installs continue to work unchanged.
No — by design. Allocated points are locked to teach commitment. If you need to reset a pool as a parent, delete the reward (which clears allocations) and recreate it.
The claim is removed but the allocation stays full. The child can hit Redeem again immediately. Rejection in pool mode means "not this time, ask me again later". To permanently cancel a pool, delete the reward.
In Pool Mode, earning points grows the spendable balance (shown at the top of the card). The LEGO bar only grows when the child taps a deposit button for that specific reward.
Each assigned child has their own deposit buttons on their own card. The combined jackpot pool fills as children contribute. Any assigned child can tap Redeem when it's full; on approval each contributing child loses only their own share.
The card has no child_id set, so TaskMate doesn't know which child is making the deposit. Either set child_id: in the card YAML, or use one card per child.
Assignment modes control how a chore is distributed among assigned children. everyone (default) shows it to all children. alternating rotates one child per day. random picks a random child each day. balanced distributes today's chores evenly so no one child gets overloaded.
Yes. On each chore, select one or more HA calendar entities in the Calendar Entities field. TaskMate creates all-day events for each assigned child, projected ahead by the configured number of days (default 14, up to 90). Configure the projection horizon in Settings.
A grace period (in minutes) after a chore's time window ends during which the child can still complete it. Default: 0 (no grace). Set it on a per-chore basis.
An optional HA entity (e.g. binary_sensor or input_boolean) that indicates whether a child is available. When the entity is not in a recognised "available" state, chores with Require Availability enabled will skip that child in assignment rotation. You can also set Availability Inverted to flip the logic, and add an Unavailability Entity as a second busy signal.
Chores where points are earned based on duration rather than a tick-off. Children start, pause, and stop a timer. Points are calculated as floor(total_seconds / (rate_minutes × 60)) × rate_points. See Timed Tasks.
Yes — use the Daily Cap (minutes) setting on the chore. When the cap is reached, the timer cannot be started again until the next day. Set to 0 for unlimited.
Stale sessions from previous days are automatically stopped and submitted at midnight. A completion record is created with the elapsed time up to that point.
Task groups coordinate how rotation-mode chores are assigned together. A sticky group assigns all its chores to the same child. A spread group assigns each chore to a different child. See Task Groups.
No — groups only affect chores using alternating, random, or balanced assignment modes. Chores in everyone mode are shown to all children regardless of groups.
Optional extra-credit tasks embedded within a parent chore. They unlock after the parent chore is completed and award additional points. See Bonus Subtasks.
No — only the parent chore completion affects streak tracking.
It's in the HA sidebar under TaskMate. It opens at /taskmate-admin and requires an admin HA user. See Admin Panel.
Both modify the same data. The admin panel is more convenient for day-to-day management and has some features not available in the config flow (task groups, time-of-day boundaries, approvals).
- Reset (default): miss a day, your streak goes back to 0
- Pause: miss a day, your streak is frozen until you complete again, then resumes
If a child completes at least one chore on every day of a week (Monday to Sunday), they receive the perfect-week bonus the following Monday at midnight. The bonus amount is configurable in Settings.
Configurable point bonuses awarded when a streak reaches certain day counts. Default: 3:5, 7:10, 14:20, 30:50, 60:100, 100:200 — meaning +5 points at 3 days, +10 at 7 days, etc. Format is days:points CSV.
Yes, by default a persistent_notification is created for every pending chore approval and (from v3.0) every pending reward claim.
You can also configure a notify.* service — typically a mobile notification integration — in TaskMate settings to also send those notifications to your phone.
Make sure the entity config points to an existing sensor. The default is sensor.taskmate_overview — check Developer Tools → States to confirm it exists.
Hard-refresh your Lovelace dashboard with Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R. Home Assistant caches frontend assets aggressively.
This was a bug in v3.0.0-beta1 — upgrade to v3.0.0 (stable) or later. An automatic migration adjusts existing allocations on first load.
A long-term performance metric: total_points_earned − total_penalties_received. It's tracked per child and snapshotted daily for historical trends.