Some automations fail silently on audio-only devices

[judebert]

I installed View Assist and added my HAVPE as a VA device. I instantiated an automation from the "View Assist - Play Music with Music Assistant" blueprint. When I gave a Play Playlist command, the HAVPE responded "Done!" and played no music.

I found a repair saying "View Assist: Play Music with Music Assistant uses an unknown action". The repair text calimed that "View Assist: Play Music with Music Assistant" (automation.view_assist_play_music_with_music_assistant) has an unknown action: view_assist.navigate".

I repaired the blueprint locally by adding a conditional in front of each of the three navigate actions:

              - alias: Do we have a screen?
                if:
                  - condition: template
                    value_template: >-
                      {% if target_satellite_device_type != 'audio_only' %}true{% else %}false{%endif}
                    alias: We have a screen!
                then:

Looking through the existing blueprints, I see other instances of naked navigate actions:

• Search Wikipedia will fail on audio-only devices due to unprotected navigate
• Play Radio with Music Assistant has an unprotected navigate; it's the last item in the sequence, so radio might still play
• Alarms, Reminders, and Timers protects navigation to set a timer, alarm, or reminder, but will fail on an unprotected navigate when the alarm rings
• Locate Person has one unprotected navigate (if person undefined), although another is protected
• Device Functions is protected, but uses duplicate code for the conversation response and could be simplified
• Device Alerts checks for empty start or end views; I'm not sure if that counts as protection or not
• Show Web Page has no type check at all
• Ask Wolfram uses browser_mod.navigate instead of view_assist.navigate, but it is protected

While gating the calls to navigate would protect users from quietly failing automations, it's a detail-oriented chore with lots of opportunity for human failure. Likewise, expecting developers to remember every view-only action and protect their calls is failure-prone.

I suggest making a virtual view for audio-only devices and allowing it to noop on navigate.

[msp1974]

Agree with your proposal to resolve. Its also fairly rare that you would only have a HAVPE device so makes more sens to always load the navigation service and just fail silently if call on a non display device. Will be in next update to view-assist-integration. Thanks for raising.