Need help understanding the path to a file when using LLM Vision

Third party integrations
1

I’m running a Proxmox VM version of HA (2025.1.3), with ips on two vlans (if any of that matters).

I’m trying to get my local AI to describe a security camera still using an automation (built using the GUI). When the automation fires, I take a snapshot of the camera image and save it to /media/test.jpg. This images get saved in my /media folder, not my /homeassistant/media folder.

I then use LLM Vision to describe the image. I use the same path, but I get an error saying the image doesn’t exist! If I go into Developer tools > Actions and fire the action everything works correctly.

I’ve tried tons of different paths, and I can’t find anything that works. I’m unsure if use Trace would actually work with the correct path, so I’ve bee trying a combo of trace and actually firing the automation by personally triggering the camera.

I’m not sure if it matters, but if I try to save the image with the path /homeassistant/media/test.jpg I get the error

allowlist_external_dirs` may need to be adjusted in `configuration.yaml

This confuses me - shouldn’t /homeassistant/media be part of the file system and /media be external? Anyways, I’ve tried several ways of setting /homeassistant/media as an external dir but haven’t gotten anything to work.

TIA for any insights.

2

Try /config/media/test.jpg.

3

I get the same error - entity /config/media/test.jpg does not exist

Backing up, I’ve now added the file to
/media
/homeassistant/media (aka /config/media)
/share
/share/media
/homeassistant/www

Another YouTuber was using /share so I thought it was worth a try. Note, I’ve manually copied the files as I don’t seem to be able to write anywhere other than to /media

Thinking it might be a permissions thing, I included the /config/www directory. I’ve tried the following three “prefixs” to the follow paths

blank, /, ./

for example:
media/test.jpg
/media/test.jpg
./media/test.jpg

path include:
media
share
www
config/media
config/www
homeassistant/media
homeassistant/www

At this point I’m of idea other than to try actual urls, but I’m not 100% what it would look like

4

OMG - I feel totally stupid! I should have been using image file, not image entity!