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tempus2016 edited this page Jul 7, 2026 · 1 revision

Give a second parent day-to-day control of TaskMate without making them a Home Assistant administrator.

Added in v4.5.0.

The problem this solves

By default, every "parent" action in TaskMate — approving chores, adjusting points, confirming rewards — requires Home Assistant admin rights. Making a partner a full HA admin just to run the daily routine also gives them the ability to change unrelated Home Assistant configuration. The parent role closes that gap: it grants the day-to-day TaskMate controls and nothing more.

Privilege tiers

Tier Who Can do
Admin Home Assistant admins Everything, including the admin panel and all configuration.
Parent (new) Non-admin HA users you designate Day-to-day actions only (see below).
Linked child An HA user linked to a child That child's own self-service.
Kiosk Unlinked / shared tablet Open child self-service.

What a parent can do

Straight from the TaskMate cards, a designated parent can:

  • Approve or reject chore completions — including Approve All
  • Approve or reject reward claims
  • Give or adjust points, gift points between children, and confirm allowance payouts
  • Award badges, and apply / postpone / dismiss mandatory-chore outcomes
  • Complete a chore on a child's behalf
  • Undo completions and approvals

What a parent cannot do

  • Open the TaskMate admin panel (/taskmate-admin) — it stays admin-only
  • Create or delete children
  • Edit chore, reward, or badge definitions
  • Change any settings, designs, or Home Assistant user links
  • Grant the parent role to anyone (only an admin can)

Every parent action is recorded in the Admin Audit Log against the parent's Home Assistant user, so there is always a trail of who did what.

Setting it up

  1. In Home Assistant, create a normal non-admin user for the parent (Settings → People → Users), if they don't already have one.
  2. Open the TaskMate admin panel → Settings → Parents (no admin rights).
  3. Tick that user in the list (admins are omitted — they already have full access) and Save.
  4. Add the TaskMate cards to a dashboard the parent can reach. They will now see the parent controls (approve, reject, complete-on-behalf, adjust points) unlocked.

To revoke, untick the user in the same place and Save.

How it works

The role is a list of Home Assistant user IDs stored in TaskMate's settings. The backend enforces it on every day-to-day service call — a caller who is neither an admin nor a listed parent is rejected with Unauthorized, so hiding a control in the UI is never the only line of defence. The cards read the list from the sensor.taskmate_overview entity to decide which controls to show.

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