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Children

Managing Children

Managing children in the admin panel

Access via the TaskMate panel → Children.

Child Fields

Field Description
Name Display name shown on all cards
Avatar MDI icon shown in the card header
Photo from (v6.4.0) Optional entity whose picture is shown instead of the avatar icon, usually the child's person entity. See Child Photos below.
Adult profile (v6.4.0) Marks the profile as a grown-up's: their chores are approved straight away, and family-wide cards leave them out unless asked. See Adult Profiles.
Availability Entity Optional HA entity (e.g. a binary_sensor or input_boolean). When the entity's state is not in the recognised "available" set, the child is treated as unavailable — chores with Require Availability enabled will skip them in rotation.
Availability Inverted Flips the availability logic — when enabled, recognised "available" states (on, home, available, present, true) mean the child is unavailable instead. Useful for entities like binary_sensor.child_at_school where on means the child is away.
Unavailability Entity Optional second HA entity for a busy/away state (e.g. a school calendar sensor). When this entity's state is in the "available" set, the child is treated as busy. Combined logic: final_available = availability_ok AND NOT busy.
Quiet Hours Optional per-child do-not-disturb window. While the local time is inside the window, this child's notifications are held back. Set in the Notifications tab. See Quiet Hours.

Levels & XP (v4.0.0)

Every child has an XP level derived from their total_points_earned (lifetime points). XP is never spent — claiming rewards reduces the spendable points balance but never lowers the level. Levels rise as the child keeps earning.

  • Level formula: level = (total_points_earned // level_xp_step) + 1 — level 1 starts at 0 XP
  • level_xp_step is the XP per Level setting (default 100); see Settings
  • The overview sensor exposes level, level_progress (XP into the current band), and level_target per child
  • Crossing a level boundary on chore approval fires a level-up celebration (every 5th level is an "epic" tier)

See Levels and XP for the full mechanics.

Avatar Options

A child's avatar is shown in card headers and on the stats sensor icon. There are two ways an avatar can be set:

  1. Parent assignment — from the Admin Panel a parent can set any avatar (a free-form MDI icon or any catalogue avatar), bypassing unlock requirements.
  2. Child self-service via the avatar catalogue (v4.0.0 unlockables) — children pick from the avatar catalogue, but only avatars they have unlocked are selectable. The taskmate.choose_avatar service enforces the unlock requirement.

Avatar unlockables (v4.0.0)

The catalogue is exposed per child in the overview sensor's children[].avatar_options, each entry carrying id, label, icon, unlocked, and a human-readable requirement. Unlock gates are one of:

Gate type Unlocks when Example requirement text
free Always available (empty)
level Child's level ≥ threshold "Level 5"
points total_points_earned ≥ threshold "500 earned"
streak best_streak ≥ threshold "7-day streak"

The shipped default catalogue includes a free starter avatar plus level-, points-, and streak-gated avatars (for example a rocket at level 3, a robot at level 5, a ninja at level 10, a crown at 500 points earned, a trophy at 1000 earned, a fire at a 7-day streak, and a diamond at a 30-day streak). See Avatars for the full default catalogue and how parents customise it.

Free-form MDI icons

When a parent sets an avatar directly, any valid MDI icon can be used. TaskMate also ships a large selection of themed icons:

Category Examples
Basic faces mdi:account-circle, mdi:face-man, mdi:face-woman
Fun characters mdi:robot-happy, mdi:ninja, mdi:pirate, mdi:alien
Animals mdi:unicorn, mdi:dragon, mdi:panda, mdi:fox, mdi:penguin, mdi:koala, mdi:dolphin, mdi:octopus
Expressive mdi:emoticon-cool, mdi:emoticon-excited, mdi:emoticon-wink, mdi:star-face
Gaming mdi:crown, mdi:trophy, mdi:rocket, mdi:sword, mdi:shield, mdi:lightning-bolt
Space/Fantasy mdi:ghost, mdi:wizard-hat, mdi:ufo, mdi:dragon
Nature mdi:mushroom, mdi:butterfly, mdi:flower-tulip, mdi:star-shooting

Any valid MDI icon can be entered manually if you want something not in the list.

Child Photos

New in v6.4.0 — contributed by @cad861

A child's face can be a real photo instead of an icon. In the child dialog, set Photo from to the child's person entity (or any entity with a picture), and every TaskMate card shows that picture wherever it would show the avatar. Home Assistant's own UI shows it on the child's stats sensor too.

  • Set the photo in Home Assistant. A person's picture is set under Settings → People. TaskMate stores only which entity to use and reads the picture from it each time, so a new photo shows up without saving anything in TaskMate.
  • The icon is the fallback. If the entity has no picture, or is removed, the cards show the child's avatar icon as before. Children with no Photo from set are unchanged.
  • It's separate from the user link. A young child often has a person with a photo but no Home Assistant login of their own, so the photo doesn't depend on Link to Home Assistant user.
  • TaskMate's own child sensors can't be picked, since they show the photo themselves.

The picture is published as avatar_image on the overview sensor's children list and on each child's points, stats and badges sensors (empty when there is none). See Sensor Attributes.

Child Data

Each child stores the following data internally:

Field Description
id Unique 8-character ID (auto-generated)
name Display name
avatar MDI icon string
availability_entity Optional HA entity ID for availability tracking
availability_inverted Whether availability logic is flipped
unavailability_entity Optional second HA entity for busy state
points Current available points balance
total_points_earned All-time points earned (never decreases)
total_chores_completed All-time chore completion count
current_streak Current consecutive days streak
best_streak Best streak ever achieved
last_completion_date ISO date of most recent chore completion
streak_paused Whether streak is paused (pause mode only)
chore_order Custom chore display order for the child
streak_milestones_achieved List of milestone day counts already rewarded
awarded_perfect_weeks List of Monday dates for awarded perfect weeks
career_score Long-term performance metric (total_points_earned − total_penalties_received)
total_penalties_received Lifetime count of penalties applied
level (v4.0+) Cached XP level derived from total_points_earned. See Levels and XP
linked_user_id (v4.0+) HA user ID linked to this child; when set, only that user (or an admin) may self-serve as this child
notify_service Optional per-child notify.* service override
quiet_hours_start (v4.4+) Start of the do-not-disturb window in HH:MM (24h); empty = disabled. See Quiet Hours
quiet_hours_end (v4.4+) End of the do-not-disturb window in HH:MM (24h, exclusive); a start later than the end is an overnight window. See Quiet Hours
picture_entity (v6.4+) Entity whose picture replaces the avatar icon; empty = use the icon. See Child Photos
is_adult (v6.4+) true for an adult profile

Editing a Child

  1. Open the TaskMate panel → Children — select the child from the list
  2. Change the name or avatar
  3. Save the change, or use Delete to remove the child

Warning: Deleting a child is permanent. Their completion history, points, and streaks are removed. The chores they were assigned to are not deleted.

Chore Order

The order chores appear on the Child Card can be customised per child using the Reorder Card or the taskmate.set_chore_order service. The order is stored on the child record, so each child can have a different chore display order.

Logging a Past Job

Each child's profile card has a Log a past job button for a job done on an earlier day that nobody ticked at the time. See Logging Past Jobs.

Points Balance

A child's points balance is their spendable balance — it decreases when a reward claim is approved. total_points_earned is a running lifetime total that only ever increases, used for leaderboard rankings and for driving the child's level/XP and avatar unlocks.

Pending reward claims reserve points but do not deduct them until the parent approves.