I have been messing around with templates and Node-RED sensors and have found that it is very easy to to create entities which have automatically generated names which cannot be deleted from the entity interface.
I would like to be able to remove (completely, no questions asked) these sensors and their data and start over.
If you’re creating them in yaml without unique_id’s you need to restart after removing the yaml. It’s impossible for HA to know if yaml entries are removed or not without reloading the configuration from a restart. Reloading only exacerbates the problem because HA can’t just go and delete entities without yaml configuration because it would remove all entities created via set state, which a ton of addons and automations do.
TLDR: Restart is the only way to solve this, no there is no way to get around it without breaking everyones system.