Conditions: Gating an Automation's Actions

Conditions are the optional gatekeepers of an automation. They sit between the trigger and the actions, deciding whether the run is allowed to continue. Once something fires the automation, WoowTech checks every condition you've listed; the actions run only if all of them come back true. The instant one returns false, the run halts and nothing further happens.

How Conditions Differ from Triggers

At a glance triggers and conditions look alike, but they answer different questions. A trigger watches for something happening and kicks the automation off. A condition, by contrast, only inspects the present state of things once the automation is already underway.

That gap matters when timing is tight. Picture a switch that's flicked on and then immediately off again. The "turned on" moment is enough to fire a trigger — yet by the time the conditions are evaluated a fraction of a second later, the switch may already read off. That mismatch is what's known as a race condition.

Which Conditions Are Available

Automations draw from the same condition catalog that scripts use. The scripts conditions reference lists every one of them.

Examples

Combining Conditions with OR Logic

Here a hallway light is switched on by motion, but only when it's genuinely dark — either the sun has dropped low enough, or the brightness sensor reads dim.

automation:
  - alias: "Light the hallway on motion"
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
        to: "on"
    conditions:
      - or:
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sun.sun
            attribute: elevation
            below: 6
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.hallway_brightness
            below: 15
    actions:
      - action: scene.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: scene.hallway_evening

Supplying a Single Template Condition

The conditions key will also accept one inline template instead of a list. The automation below behaves like the previous one but expresses its gate as a single Jinja expression.

automation:
  - alias: "Light the hallway on motion"
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
        to: "on"
    conditions: "{{ state_attr('sun.sun', 'elevation') < 6 }}"
    actions:
      - action: scene.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: scene.hallway_evening