Automation "Class" vs Individual Device Automation

Hey everyone,

Maybe this is more philosophical than a how-do-I (I guess it depends on the answer to my question!) but is there a way to do automations from an automation-first perspective vs the current device-first perspective?

For example, automations (at least as I understand them) are done from a device perspective: “I have HUE Bulb 1 in the living room and I want it to do [x] under [y] conditions and I have HUE Bulb 2 in the kitchen and I want to do [v] under [w] conditions.”

This makes sense in a small setup but I’m building one with hundreds of individual devices, every single one of which will have at least one similar automation applied, most of them probably more than one. And then many of these will have various similar conditions applied. I haven’t done the math, but it already gives me a headache thinking of the potential thousands of individual automations.

Ideally, since I’ll only have a handful of automations (do [a] at sunset, do [b] every 5 minutes, do [c] when the brightness is at [x] but only if in [g] mode, etc.), I’d like to configure my system from an automation-first perspective, assigning devices to automation “classes” of sorts.

Is there an existing way to do this or am I dreaming of a complete re-think of how HA works?

TIA for any advice!

If you haven’t already, I suggest that you take a look at Appdaemon which was written partly for the purpose of making it easier to write automations for Home Assistant.
https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. You need to have basic understanding of Python to fully make use of it though. I have moved all my automations to Appdaemon since it is so much easier to “reuse” functionality.

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Thoughts on Appdaemon vs Node Red? Anyone?