vome-esphome: ESPHome at the side of Claude Code

A side pane for the ESPHome device Claude is working on. Claude reads and edits YAML and runs builds that take minutes, and its tools answer only at the end; this pane shows the device and the build as they are:

• A map of the device, from its YAML, whenever Claude reads, saves or builds a config: the board and framework, how it connects, its buses, every entity with its pins, what reacts to what (on press → light.toggle), and which pin does what. A pin used twice, or a strapping pin the chip boots from, is flagged. After a save, what it added, changed or removed is lit for a few seconds. Passwords and keys in the YAML are never shown.
• The build as it runs: the phase and a progress bar (compiling with its percentage, linking, uploading), the latest two lines of output with errors in red and warnings in yellow, and the result: "✓ Flashed in 2:41", or "✗ Failed after 1:02" with the first error. Press l for the whole log.
• Your devices, after Claude lists them, with the ones that have newer firmware waiting marked ↑.
• A chip on the bench, in the terminal, in round dots. Compiling is a forge: cogs turn and spark, object files fall onto the growing firmware. Flashing sends it to the chip in glittering whooshes. A good build ends in fireworks, a failed one in smoke. At rest the device's own things hang off the chip (a bulb glowing, a thermometer creeping, a button blinking), and with no device known it sleeps and dreams of some. Press b to turn it off.

The pane only reads. It never starts a build: Claude does, with its own tool calls, which you approve as usual.

Quickstart

1. Add the Vome app to Home Assistant, then get a key from it. No sign-up needed.

The button opens your own Home Assistant and adds the app's repository. Pick Vome and Install, open it, and on the Agent tab create a key. The same Home Assistant needs the ESPHome Device Builder app: that is what compiles and flashes, and Vome reaches it for Claude with no ports opened.

2. Paste these into Claude Code, in a terminal (version 2.1.275 or newer):

/plugin install vome-connect --marketplace Vortitron/home-assistant-mcp

It asks for the key from step 1. Then:

/plugin install vome-esphome --marketplace Vortitron/home-assistant-mcp
/reload-plugins

Or all four Vome panes at once (automations, ESPHome, health and a working dashboard): /plugin install vome-panes --marketplace Vortitron/home-assistant-mcp.

3. Ask Claude about a device, for example "Add a temperature sensor on GPIO4 to the hallway node and flash it". The pane opens beside the conversation with the device's map, and the build when it starts.

In auto mode, the pane asks you to allow its two read-only tools the first time; it shows the exact lines and where they go.

Allow its reads (auto mode)

The pane reads in the background with two of the MCP's read-only tools: the build's progress (esphome_activity) and, when Claude builds a device it has not read, its YAML for the map (esphome_get_config). In auto mode, Claude Code refuses background calls that no request of yours is behind, unless they're allowed by name; the pane then shows the exact lines to add and where. Under your server's name, for example:

{ "permissions": { "allow": ["mcp__vome__esphome_activity", "mcp__vome__esphome_get_config"] } }

With vome-connect the server is plugin_vome-connect_vome, so the lines are mcp__plugin_vome-connect_vome__esphome_activity and mcp__plugin_vome-connect_vome__esphome_get_config. Without them, the pane still shows the elapsed time, the map of any config Claude reads, and the output once the build finishes.

Keys

| | | | --- | --- | | /esphome | open the pane | | l | the whole build log, or back to the map and the latest lines | | b | the chip animation off or on (remembered) |

If another pane is in front, the ESPHome tab's title says how the build is going (ESPHome · 45%, ESPHome ✓).

Privacy

The pane reads only from your own MCP server, through the connection Claude Code already has: what the build commands Claude ran have printed, and the YAML of the device being built. Nothing is sent anywhere else.