How do I timestamp a specific time everyday?

Sorry, I am new to this forum and still feeling my way around the search function.
Here is what I want to achieve: I want a smart switch to automatically dim down the light starting at 7pm, everyday, 4% every 10 minutes, until 200 minutes later and then stays at 20% thereafter. The problem I get into is, all the time functions in yaml seem to be in strings, rather than number, which makes calculation impossible. The easiest way it seems is if I could get a time stamp at 7pm everyday, (which is a different string every day), and count the minutes to current timestamp. And for the life of me, I can’t find the way to do it.

I am sure this has been solved before, probably multiple times. I would appreciate it if someone can point me to the right thread. Thanks in advance.

Apparently, you re looking at doing something like:

Regarding time manipulation, look at

Quick answer:

{{ today_at("19:00")|as_timestamp }}

Yes, that’s the idea. And yes I have looked at that thread, which is indeed EPIC. It’s is very long and for someone with no coding skills whatsoever, each new term takes me to a new tangent. I will continue to learn from that post, which go me to finally understand the difference of strings vs numbers.

Very interesting. Haven’t run across this before. I will give it a try. Thanks.