@myhass140 and did you do what it asked?
What I really wonder - does your esphome YAML by accident or silliness doesn’t contain an api: line? 
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Yes, this is consistent issues , they keep updating and changing the interface and introducing new issies. The documentation is BS too.
Is it? For me it’s a constant non-issue 
Feel free to participate to make it better! It’s open source and everybody is invited to improve things like the documentation (specially users like you which having problems understanding the docs and therefor could make them better for everybody! 
)
There is even a guide how to contribute 
@orange-assistant: A stupid reply. How can one contribute to documents when one is learning . We come here asking for assistance. Your reply is totally unhelpful and puts one off asking for help.
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Exactly these people who have a hard time learning know what additional information in the docs would have helped than achieve their goal faster. Users and devs which regularly work with esphome and the docs (and have already some knowledge) typically have no problems with the “BS” docs (@ForxPorx) likes to call them.
It’s just a point of view and it’s really necessary for the people who have problems understanding the documentation to improve them 
That’s okay (and that’s what the forum is there for indeed) - but sadly many people have problems even providing the minimum information necessery so others can actually help them. 
Also people (like you @myhass140) get offers/question to narrow down the problems but often don’t even bother to reply back 
Not much humans can do when an individual doesn’t want to get help 
Wow, clueless and rude or what! All my (few) questions posted are followed up in detail with whoever has “kindly” assisted me. I where possible also make note of “My Solutions & mistakes” so others can learn.
No response required as have unlinked myself from this thread as nothing to learn here.
Not that I’m aware of Maybe you see a different thread than the rest of us? Check January 19th 2023 of this thread 
followed by no reply of you (the person who seeking for help)
Maybe you thought
Mmm, do you see me asking a question anywhere there? All I did was agree about the “Getting Started” not being at all clear seeing as you were suggesting that we don’t read them.
You then went on to reply with what comes across as a “sneer” by writing:
I chose to move on as there wasn’t anything to learn here nor add. I certainly wasn’t going to reply to you then but am now. Perhaps try to be more helpful and leave off the “Laughing out loud at People” EMO’s. It’s not very becoming nor helpful.
The users tried to help you here just wanted to know (make sure) you have the api: line in your esphome yaml. As you didn’t post the yaml (How to ask a good question 
Format it properly) this is obviously the first doubt to clear with such a specific error message 
Which makes us wonder what you did. (How to ask a good question 
Describe what you changed)
Somewhat expect that for such a ‘clear’ error message there is no further details in the documentation.
In anyway what have probably been the most helpful (and probably the next question raised after confirming the api: line is in the yaml) would be posting your logs 
(How to ask a good question 
Share the logs)
That’s unfortunate but sadly you are not alone in not getting help. While most users are capable of asking “good questions” and even proactively provide yaml/logs (or when asked) there are also others that are struggling with the basics. Often these are the ones not receiving help simply because most people who want to support them have no crystal ball 
.
And while this posted picture mind be funny at first it is to often the case that users don’t read the docs or do a (1 minute) search before posting a question - which often leads to frustrations for the volunteers
This forum is not a helpdesk
The people here don’t work for Home Assistant, that’s an open source project. We are volunteering our free time to help others. Not all topics may get an answer, never mind one that helps you solve your problem.
Beside not everybody
The first post of @ForxPorx is a good example: 
Not much of value…
Still wouldn’t make it more valuable so instead I pointed out that the “BS” documentation the user was ranting about is crowed sourced and that he got the power to change something (if he actually want’s too - which I indeed really much doubt based on his type of post).
It happens that users are not able to ask (good) question but still want help. So the volunteers here helping others in their free time also have skills “detecting” unasked questions. So for example if a user posts a error message often it indirectly implies a problem even giving no further information.
Anyway the fast majority in this community luckily acts in good faith and most users are also capable of getting help. 
Promoting How to help us help you - or How to ask a good question more so (specially new) users give it a 5 minute read is one of the few things the supporters can do with the hope improving the quality (and even quantity) of questions asked
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Pulling this old thread back to life as I just spend days down the rabbit hole after changes to my home network. Which changes broke it I cannot say for sure but my Rpi4 running HASS.IO is connected to the same vlan used for IoT devices as my access points.
My computer I use for my coding etc is on another vlan. I could ping my esphome device and flash it from my computer and home assistant would detect it but fail with the API message.
After literally days of looking at firewall configs and logs I decided to put my pc onto the same vlan and try again, this provided some interesting and strange results, I could still ping the esphome device, but I could no longer flash it over the network as I had previously.
so, for some reason my router was blocking some udp traffic between the devices.
Next I tried to ping and compile from computer attached to the saem access points as the esphome device, this worked.
So the issue was wired on the same vlan to wireless on the same vlan was blocking the handshake .
I made certain my router allowed traffic other then AP generated traffic on the VLAN it did.
I then found out about a hidden internal menu on the router that had additonal wireless settings to bypass the firewall rules for traffic between wired and wireless devices on the same vlan. After fixing this my issue was resolved.
So whilst ping may work you may have a similar traffic blocking setting in place that is not easily found.
My network setup is using all SonicPoint equipment, TZ350 firewall, SW14-24FPOE switch and a variety of SonicPoint APs, the article that finally helped me find the solution for my setup is here.
I hope this helps others out there.
And yet you nor anyone else has actually answered the question, and that is:
When following the documentation, if you click the “ADD INTEGRATION TO MY” HA, it eventually opens a pop-up box, asking “Please enter connection settings of your ESPHome node”.
What device or host address is supposed to be entered there?
Do we have to be on the physical device running HA for it to work?
If you click on the documentation link, it goes back to the page you came from, and no where is the answer to the above documented. In order for any of those asking this question to actually document it, we’d actually need an answer to the above, and then be able to use it successfully in order to update the documentation.
My device was automatically found, but I’ve been trying to get the ESPHome dashboard to show to no avail, and was hoping following the documentation might actually help - but it hasn’t.
There are also two github issues about this that were closed, with no resolution or helpful details.
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The address you enter is the IP address of the ESP32 that you flashed your ESPHome built firmware onto.
Also note that the ESPHome integration (which is what you just added) is not the same as the ESPHome add-on, which is where you would find the dashboard.
Connecting your device to Home Assistant
Once your configuration is installed on your ESP device and is online, it will be automatically discovered by Home Assistant and offered to set up on your integrations screen:
Alternatively, you can manually add the device on the Home Assistant Integrations page. Click on the “Add Integration” button (bottom right), search for esphome, and enter the host name, eg: “<NODE_NAME>.local” as the host. Use the same process to add multiple esphome devices.
You are mixing things up. Did you yet read the FAQ? 
It’s very useful and also has information about the questions you just raised 
Please don’t link them! 
Yes but I see no answer in the FAQ nor in any of the other pages of documentations, issues and comments I’ve gone through. If it was we might not have multiple people having the same problem here.
But I finally figured out that the “node” as part of “Please enter connection settings of your ESPHome node” is the host name or IP address and port that the ESPHome dashboard is listening on.
OK never mind, the above was wrong.
Using some of the details here:
I started the dashboard and can access it via a web browser.
And now when I enter the dashboard’s IP address and port in HA as the “node”, it no longer immediately returns, but after about 30 seconds comes back with the same error as before: “Can’t connect to ESP. Please make sure your YAML file contains an ‘api:’ line”.
It must be connecting and getting a timeout or other failure. Now TBD as to what is causing the actual connection to fail.
No. The ESPHome Dashboard (e.g. Add-on) is completely independent from the esphome node(s) that you want to integrate into HA. 
What you need to do is to enter the host name or IP from the esphome node connected to your network 
The ESPHome Dashboard itself is used to create/edit/update esphome nodes. It doesn’t need to run the same host as HA and isn’t necessary for the esphome integration in HA.
OK thanks for the response, I finally get it.
And with my docker-compose setup, I can’t easily install the add-on for ESPHome.
I have the web page working with ESPHome, and will just use that.
Now trying to figure out how to “adopt” an existing / flashed device.
I have been reading this with interest. I am pleased for you, but I still totally do not get it. A big part of the problem is the weird language. When it says “ESPHome node” does it mean the device I am trying to add? (O/T: If so why doesn’t it just plug and play anyway? Not explained). I put in its IP address as determined by looking at my network, and like innumerable other people I get the “Can’t connect to ESP. Please make sure your YAML file contains an ‘api:’ line.” message. When it says “your YAML file” which one does it mean? My personal file? Do I even have one? Must mean the configuration.yaml then, yes? Apparently not. It’s the yaml file for the device. And - again, like innumerable others - it does indeed have an “api:” entry. So, then what? Nothing I can find explains what to do next … hence these despairing forum posts. Bear in mind that, to new users of HA like myself, saying “The ESPHome Dashboard is completely independent from the esphome node(s) that you want to integrate into HA.” simply makes no sense, given that you use the ESPHome thingy in HA to try to add the device aka “node”. By the way, the “Please enter connection settings…” dialogue box defaults to Port 6053 on mine. What is that? Is it correct? How can I tell? I can’t find anything in the installation instructions for my device or the wider ESPHome documentation that even explains what that is.
Note I’m not and advanced nor expert on ESPHome, and have only one ESPHome device.
When it says “ESPHome node” does it mean the device I am trying to add? (O/T: If so why doesn’t it just plug When it says “your YAML file” which one does it mean? My personal file? Do I even have one? Must mean the configuration.yaml then, yes?
“node” is your ESPHome device - enter its IP address or hostname.
AFAIK if it can’t properly communicate with your device, you’ll get this failure and message.
I got this for my device when I first enabled it and it was already automatically found and in use by HA, but I don’t see this anymore - it actually says the device is already configured, not sure if HA changed or what. This made it super confusing for me.
So,make sure you can ping / access the device from your HA system. If so, I don’t know what’s broken for your setup nor what logs / details you need to get further.
For the yaml part: it means the EPSHome yaml file that you’d use to modify the firmware of your device, and that file is used with ESPHome Dashboard - I assume the note about the YAML is just always output, because the HA ESPHome integration will hit this same code if it can’t connect or if it connected and the device yaml did not have the api line for home assistant.
Bear in mind that, to new users of HA like myself, saying “The ESPHome Dashboard is completely independent from the esphome node(s) that you want to integrate into HA.” simply makes no sense, given that you use the ESPHome thingy in HA to try to add the device aka “node”.
ESPHome Dashboard is software that you run separately - it can be on a different system from HA - and it’s used to flash / update firmware on your ESPHome device(s).
There’s an HA add-on (not an HA integration!) for it that can show up in the HA sidebar (HA left column). HAAS can set that up, but I’m not using HAAS and couldn’t figure out how to add it (not asking for help with that). But you can run it in docker or elsewhere (though it has its own problems if mDNS is not setup / working on your network), and you only need it to flash or update your devices firmware - if it’s working fine (and yours is not at this point), no need to get the Dashboard working.
By the way, the “Please enter connection settings…” dialogue box defaults to Port 6053 on mine. What is that? Is it correct? How can I tell? I can’t find anything in the installation instructions for my device or the wider ESPHome documentation that even explains what that is.
Based on tcpdump output, ESPHome uses port 6053 to communicate with ESPHome devices in HA - I assume you can change that in the ESPHome devices yaml and use a different port on your device if you wanted.
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Sorry just catching up. Thanks Patrick. In the end the fundamental issue was the way my home network was (mis)configured. I’ve spent a few days thinking about it and reading up, then took the plunge this morning and reconfigured everything. Touch wood, so far so good. Cheers.