Timed Unlock Rewards

Spend points to unlock something for a while — the TV, the console socket, a wifi group. Approving the claim turns the entity on; a timer turns it back off.

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Two Deliberate Limits

This is the one TaskMate feature that reaches out and changes your house, so it is deliberately narrow:

1. A reward can only turn one entity on and back off. There is no free-form service call, no payload, no template.
2. The entity must be on your allowlist.

An empty allowlist permits nothing. This gates household devices, so the safe default when unconfigured is "no".

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Setting It Up

1. Settings → Unlock allowlist

Add the entities a reward may touch. An entry can be:

• a full entity id — switch.xbox
• a bare domain — switch, to permit everything in it

2. Open a reward → Advanced — timed unlock

Pick an allowlisted entity and a duration, up to 24 hours. 0 leaves it on for you to turn off yourself.

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Key Points

• The allowlist is checked twice — when the reward is saved, and again when it fires. You can revoke an entity later and any reward pointing at it quietly stops unlocking rather than breaking.
• Active unlocks are persisted. A Home Assistant restart mid-unlock re-arms the timer; anything already past due is turned off at startup. A restart can never strand the television on.
• Turning something off is never gated by the allowlist. A revert is always safe, so removing an entity from the allowlist can't trap it in the on state.

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Events

Event	Fired when
taskmate_unlock_started	The unlock begins
taskmate_unlock_ended	The timer reverts it

Both carry entity_id, reward_id, reward_name, child_id, child_name, started_at and revert_at.

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Examples

Reward	Entity	Duration
One hour of Xbox	switch.xbox_socket	60 min
Film night	switch.living_room_tv	180 min
Extra wifi after bedtime	switch.kids_wifi	30 min

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Related

• Rewards — costs, jackpots, spending caps and the claim flow
• Managing Rewards — the parent approval workflow
• Settings — the unlock allowlist
• Insights — the health report flags a reward whose entity has left the allowlist
• Automations — every TaskMate bus event