I built a small Home Assistant add-on that runs the Hawser agent inside HA, so Dockhand can manage the Docker environment your Home Assistant instance lives on — containers, images, networks, volumes and Compose stacks, all from a single UI.
The agent supports two modes, so you can pick whichever fits your network:
Edge mode — the agent dials out to Dockhand. Best behind NAT or on a dynamic IP, no port-forwarding needed.
Standard mode — the agent listens for connections from Dockhand. Best on a LAN with a stable address.
The Hawser binary is not baked into the add-on image. On first start the add-on downloads the matching upstream release for your architecture from GitHub, verifies its SHA256 against the official checksums.txt, and caches it on the persistent /data volume — keeps the image small and upgrades straightforward.
Architectures supported: aarch64, amd64, armv7.
What it looks like once connected
Your HA host appears in Dockhand as a regular Docker host, with a live overview card (container counts, CPU/memory, top-CPU containers), the full container list with state/image/uptime/resource usage, and a built-in terminal for exec'ing into any container:
Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store, then ⋮ → Repositories.
Add: https://github.com/Malith-Rukshan/addon-dockhand-hawser (or just click the badge above — it adds the repo and jumps straight to the add-on).
Install Hawser Agent for Dockhand.
On the Info page, toggle Protection mode → OFF (required — the agent needs the host's Docker socket).
Set dockhand_url and token on the Configuration tab, then Start.
Requires Home Assistant OS or Supervised (uses the Supervisor — won't work on HA Container or HA Core). Outbound internet is needed on first start to pull the Hawser binary.
Thanks for this.. I just happened to be searching for something similar and found this. (Ideally I would like to replace portainer with dockhand within HA)
Unfortunately, I tried it with many different settings and nothing worked.
You have some bugs in the configuration where some settings are not saved after changing them.
You reference the wrong url port on the 'open web ui' link for standard configuration
Edge doesn't work in my configuration, standard got close, I could see dockhand talking to the addon but it didn't connect properly (might be due to network configuration?).
For those new to dockhand I think it worth clearly explaining that you are still required to run dockhand outside of HA, and this allows the HA docker environment to be managed from your external dockhand install.
I would also suggest adding some more information on exactly how to configure it. It was quite confusing initially and I had to read the docks on the hawser agent and creating tokens. Could add some configuration text regarding the need to go to dockhand and add an environment with the standard/edge configuration in order to connect them.
There's a very good chance this is AI slop. If they don't respond in a timely fashion (or they respond with AI nonsense), please feel free to flag the post. Thanks.
same for me. the docker ports in standard mode are exposed but cannot connect to the running APP, even from Advanced SSH on HAOS host. edge mode does not work either.
also the Open Web UI page that loads mentions port :2375 but that does not match the :2376 (default) or :2377 (configured)
The term Add-on no longer is used. Your outdated AI that helped you write this probably doesn't know this...
I would suggest to update all your documentation and refer to the correct term(s), as adding new apps but telling people to use the add-on store to install them will not go well. If you are going to have an AI write your documentation, please check it for accuracy.
Port thing is fixed in the latest. For the settings not saving, can you tell me which field? Probably the optional ones (agent_name, tls_cert,tls_key) since I had empty strings as defaults.
Yeah Dockhand runs separately, this is just the agent inside HAOS, I'll make that clearer in the README.
Yeah that one's on me, default was 2375 originally and I switched to 2376 but forgot the WebUI page. Pushed a fix, it now reads the configured port at startup.
Also fyi, that page is just a static placeholder for the sidebar. Hawser doesn't have its own UI, the real one is your Dockhand dashboard. Let me know if standard mode connects after the update.
