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Shopping-List Jobs

Add "#tm fetch logs from the shed" to Home Assistant's shopping list — or say it to Assist — and a couple of minutes later the children see 🛒 Fetch logs from the shed. When the job is done, TaskMate ticks the item off the list.

Setting It Up

Settings → Shopping-list jobs in the TaskMate panel.

Setting What it does
Turn on shopping-list jobs Off by default
To-do list Any todo entity. Default todo.shopping_list
Tag Only items that start with this become jobs. Default #tm, no spaces
Points per job Default 5
Who does it First to do it — every chosen child sees it and the first to finish gets the points; or Take turns — one child per job, going round the chosen children
Children None chosen means every child who isn't an adult

How It Works

  • TaskMate reads the list's open items every two minutes (todo.get_items).
  • An item counts when its text starts with the tag, followed by a space, : or -. #tm sweep the path and #TM: sweep the path both work; #tmp… and sweep the path #tm don't. The job is named after the rest of the text, with its first letter in capitals.
  • Each item becomes one job, matched by the to-do item's id, however often the list is read.
  • The job is a one-off chore with no deadline. While the item is still on the list and nobody has done it, the job carries over from day to day.
  • A job always needs a parent's approval: a list item is nobody's judgement of the work, so neither the auto-approve timer nor a sibling check pays it.
  • Anyone who can write to the list can raise jobs, so the list is bounded: at most 5 new jobs per read and 10 jobs on the go at once. Extra items stay on the list and come through as earlier jobs are done.
  • Done: once the chore is completed — and approved, if it needs approval — TaskMate marks the item completed with todo.update_item.
  • Ticked off or deleted first: the job is removed if nobody has done it. If a child already did it, it stays for a parent to approve or reject.
  • If the list can't be read (the entity is missing or unavailable), nothing is removed.
  • Deleting the job in TaskMate leaves the item on the list, and it won't come back as a job.

Automations

Event

Event Fields
taskmate_shopping_job kind (added / done / removed), chore_id, chore_name, item_uid, child_ids, timestamp

It also shows on the family event entity as Shopping-list job.

# Tell the kids when a new job lands
triggers:
  - trigger: event
    event_type: taskmate_shopping_job
    event_data:
      kind: added
actions:
  - action: notify.family_tablet
    data:
      message: "New job: {{ trigger.event.data.chore_name }}"