The docs for zones state passive zones can be used for automations, just the zone won’t be used for person state (it says name, but I think it should say state)
When a zone is set to passive, the persons attribute of the zone is never populated even when there are people in the zone which means it cannot be used to trigger automations based on persons in a zone. Zone platform events (enter, leave) do work but that doesn’t help in a situation like this where the enter event might not be triggered if the person never left the zone.
{{ 'person.jason' in state_attr('zone.heading_home','persons')
and is_state_attr('proximity.jphone_home','dir_of_travel','towards') }}
Shouldn’t the persons attribute be populated even though the a zone is are set to passive?