I’ve been a Home Assistant user for years, and like many of you, I’ve always felt stuck in the “Great Divide.”
I loved the stability of Native YAML (and the fact that it just works), but as my logic got complex, I hated looking at a 500-line wall of text. On the flip side, I loved the visual clarity of Node-RED, but I didn’t love the overhead of a second engine, the WebSocket latency, or the fear of my house “breaking” if an addon crashed.
I kept wondering: Why can’t we have both?
So, I spent some time building C.A.F.E. (Complex Automation Flow Editor).
side by side comparison
What is C.A.F.E.?
It’s a visual flow editor (built on React Flow) that lives as a panel inside your HA sidebar. The “magic” is in the transpiler: it takes your visual nodes and compiles them into 100% compliant Home Assistant native logic.
Key Features:
Native-First: No side-files or external databases. It reads and writes directly to your HASS automation storage.
Complex Logic: It uses a “State-Machine” pattern (via native repeat loops) to allow for cross-branching and loops that standard YAML usually struggles with.
Legacy Support: You can load your existing automations. If they weren’t built in C.A.F.E., it uses a heuristic auto-layout to build a visual map for you so you can finally see what that old “spaghetti” YAML is actually doing.
Trace-Integrated: It’s fully compatible with the official HASS Trace View. You can even see the path of execution right on your canvas (coming soon).
No “Lock-in”: If you decide you don’t like C.A.F.E., you can delete the integration. Your automations stay in your system and keep running forever because they are just standard YAML.
A Humble Beta
I’m an Italian developer and a huge fan of this community. This is a first beta release, so there might be some rough edges (especially with complex manual YAML imports!), but I’m eager to hear your feedback.
I’ve put my heart into the engineering here—trying to make it feel “high-performance” but lightweight.
I’ll be around in the comments to answer any technical questions about the transpiler or the architecture. I hope this helps some of you move those complex flows back to native!
Hi Frederico,
I was planning my migration to Homey until is saw this integration. I see it as essential.
I have converted a few integrations so far - great stuff -
I have got stuck converting one UI automation that opens my garage door when my pixel phone changes state from not_home to home. Can I get some help on this?
A couple of YouTubers did videos on it… as YAML is the spawn of the devil, I was on it asap… for me loaded easily and works well… (I don’t have that many automations and mostly simple ones, but the future is slightly clearer… thanks…
What is C.A.F.E.?
Key Features:
A Humble Beta
