NetDaemon Toolkit

A tiny Home Assistant custom integration that adds a sidebar panel for managing a NetDaemon instance — straight from the HA frontend (and therefore from anywhere via Nabu Casa, no VPN/port-forward needed). Built for NetDaemon's source-deploy mode; optionally also builds and runs your apps as a real, compiled host instead — see Compiled builds.

It started as an emergency single-file editor and has grown to cover the day-to-day loop around it: triggering entity codegen, reloading the runtime, and reading its status. Real development still happens in VS Code / Rider — this is for the "I'm away and one app won't compile" moment, or a quick edit without opening an IDE.

📖 Deeper dive into how it's built: docs/architecture.md (English) · Blogbeitrag auf Deutsch

Features

• Sidebar panel with a file list (.cs only) and a plain-text editor.
• Reads/writes files confined to one configured directory (default /config/netdaemon) — no path traversal, no other file types.
• Shows configured NetDaemon status entities (reload status / compile errors) next to the editor, so you don't edit blind.
• Regenerates typed Home Assistant entities (codegen) and reloads the NetDaemon runtime, both from the panel.
• Optional log view and webhook relay (forward HA webhooks onto the event bus so NetDaemon apps can react to them without an automations.yaml shim).
• Optional compiled builds: build the same apps/ tree as a real, full-SDK dotnet build instead of NetDaemon's own source-deploy compiler (full NuGet access, no narrow-reference-set workarounds), with Rebuild and Rollback buttons in the panel. See docs/architecture.md.
• No Docker socket or API access anywhere in this integration.
• Admin-only access throughout. No build step, no external dependencies.

Requirements

• NetDaemon set up to run in source-deploy mode, at least initially. See docs/architecture.md for what that entails and its trade-offs — and, once that's working, the optional compiled builds path past those trade-offs.
• Home Assistant must be able to see the NetDaemon source folder — bind-mount it into the HA container, e.g. /path/to/netdaemon:/config/netdaemon.
• Reload, status, and codegen need a handful of small NetDaemon-side apps, which the integration installs into your NetDaemon folder automatically on setup (see Installation below and docs/architecture.md for what each one does). Without them the panel still works as a plain file editor.

Installation (HACS, custom repository)

1. HACS → Integrations → ⋮ → Custom repositories → add this repo as type Integration.
2. Install "NetDaemon Toolkit", restart Home Assistant.
3. Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration → "NetDaemon Toolkit".
4. Set the directory and, optionally, the console log path and any webhook relays (see Configuration below).
5. Restart NetDaemon once, the normal way you already restart it (Docker, the add-on, however you manage it — not from inside the panel). The integration writes a handful of small NetDaemon-side files (reload/status/ codegen/rebuild apps, plus two files only used by compiled builds — see below) into apps/_toolkit/ under your configured directory on setup — but only the ones missing, so it never overwrites files you've customized. This first restart is what gets these apps running in the first place; the panel's own reload button won't do anything yet, since it works by asking ControlApp to restart NetDaemon, and ControlApp isn't running until after this restart. Every restart after this first one can go through the panel. (Home Assistant will also show a persistent notification as a reminder whenever this applies — including on an update that adds new files here, like the one to enable compiled builds.)

Configuration

Option	Default	Meaning
directory	/config/netdaemon	Folder whose .cs files are editable
console_log	—	Optional, path (from HA's own point of view) to NetDaemon's console log. Setup steps: docs/architecture.md
webhook_relays	—	Optional, one relay per line: <webhook_id>:<event_type>. Each configured webhook fires the given event on HA's event bus with the webhook's JSON body as event data, so a NetDaemon app can subscribe to it directly. Changes take effect as soon as you save (reconfigure), no restart needed.

Security

Access is restricted to the configured directory and to .cs files, paths are resolved and checked against escaping, and every WebSocket command (reads included) requires an admin user. No feature needs Docker socket or API access — see docs/architecture.md for how reload, codegen, and the log view work.

License

MIT.