No global/presistent variables or attributes?

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1

To be honest, I’m a bit at a loss at the moment. Homeassistant is a really great piece of software and I’ve been in the process of porting my existing home automation system for some time now.
What I’m currently failing at, however, are the very simple options that are available to me on my current platform:

  • Attributes
    On my current platform, I can add my own attributes and write their values. I use them in different contexts to control further actions via these attributes? Why is this not really possible in HA? Or I have seen something, but I don’t understand if this is what I need?

  • Global variables
    As far as I understand, the helpers are supposed to take their place? I would like to set a flag in a blueprint, which then causes a certain step within the blueprint to no longer be executed. If I have not misunderstood everything, is this not possible due to the scopes of the variables?

If I look at this Trigger based template sensor to store global variables, there is obviously a need to be able to somehow save values that survive and can be reused.
Alternatively, I would use a blueprint to create suitable helpers. But if I understand correctly, this is not possible.

I’m currently very frustrated because I’ve already invested a lot of time trying to avoid problems in this context. Yes, with some things it’s not wrong to rethink approaches and perhaps do things differently. But the restrictions described make it impossible or extremely time-consuming and complex to implement some otherwise simple things.

There is also a plugin GitHub - rogro82/hass-variables: Home Assistant variables component that was probably already used by some, but is now outdated, which retrofits exactly the functionality.

Are there any good ways that I might have overlooked?

And why is it the way it is currently?

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It would be easier for us to suggest options and/or approaches if you would describe what you are trying to do instead of how you think you want to do it.

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That integration has been forked to a new developer:

you can also create your own attributes in an entity by using customizations. But they are only statically created. I use it for creating battery infor such as type and quantity for all my battery powered devices.

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It is possible using manual customisation. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/homeassistant/#manual-customization

Yes “helpers” can be considered global variables and would be the best option for your blueprint use case.