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Vacation Mode

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tempus2016 edited this page Jun 22, 2026 · 2 revisions

Vacation mode lets you mark date ranges as time off. During a vacation, all chores are paused and streaks are frozen — days inside a vacation never count as missed, so a streak survives a holiday.

What a Vacation Does

While today falls inside a vacation period:

  • All chores are paused — every chore reports as unavailable, so children see nothing to do (the child card shows an on-vacation banner instead of the chore list).
  • Streaks are frozen — the nightly streak check is skipped entirely on a vacation day. No streak is reset or paused.
  • Missed days are forgiven — when the streak check next runs, any vacation days between a child's last completion and today are not counted as misses. A genuine, non-vacation day that was missed still breaks the streak as normal.

Away days also surface as multi-day all-day "Away" events on each child's Calendar.

Three Ways to Mark Time Off

From v4.1.0 a child can be treated as away from any of three stacking sources, OR'd together. The first two are global (they apply to every child); the third is per-child.

  1. Static vacation periods (vacation_periods) — named date ranges you define by hand. Historical date math: a day counts as away when it falls inside any period.
  2. Calendar-synced vacations (vacation_calendar) — point the setting at a Home Assistant calendar.* entity and TaskMate follows it live: whenever that calendar has an active event, every child is treated as away for as long as the event runs. Fail-open — a missing or broken entity never freezes anyone. Leave the setting empty to disable.
  3. Per-child availability — a child who opts in with pause_streak_when_unavailable is treated as away whenever their own availability sensor (which may itself be a calendar.* entity) reports them unavailable. This affects only that child.

While a child is away — from any source — their streak is paused: no streak break, and no missed-mandatory penalties pile up for those days.

Setting Up a Vacation

Add and remove vacation periods in the Admin Panel under Settings, using the vacation editor. Each period has:

Field Description
Name Optional label (e.g. "Summer holiday")
Start First day of the vacation (inclusive)
End Last day of the vacation (inclusive)

Both bounds are inclusive ISO dates. If you enter the end before the start, TaskMate swaps them automatically. Up to 50 periods can be stored.

Periods are saved in the vacation_periods setting as a list of { id, name, start, end } entries, sorted by start date.

What Resumes Afterwards

There is nothing to switch back on. The moment the current date moves past a vacation's end date:

  • Chores become available again on their normal schedule.
  • The nightly streak check runs again. Because the vacation days were forgiven, a child who was on a streak before the holiday keeps it — completing on the first day back continues the run.

Sensor Attributes

Both sensor.taskmate_overview and the chores sensor expose the current vacation state:

Attribute Description
vacation_active true if today is inside any vacation period
vacation_name Name of the active period (empty if none)
vacation_end End date of the active period (empty if none)

sensor.taskmate_overview additionally exposes vacation_periods — the full validated list, for cards or automations that want to show upcoming time off.

Related

  • Calendar — "Away" events on the per-child calendars
  • Chores — chore availability
  • Bonus Points — streak milestones and perfect-week bonuses that vacations protect

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