Ask question on satellite

Use this action to ask a question on an Assist satellite, listen for the response, and match it against a list of possible answers. The matched answer is returned in a response variable, so you can decide what to do next in your automation or script.

If you provide the question as text, the satellite converts it to audio using the text-to-speech system of its configured pipeline. The response is transcribed using the speech-to-text system of the same pipeline.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To ask a question from an automation or a script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger. They run when something else calls them.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. Search for and select Ask question on satellite.
6. Select the Entity to ask the question on, set the Question, and add the possible Answers.
7. Select Save.

This action does not support targets. In the UI, you choose the satellite in the Entity field.

Options in the UI

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this action as assist_satellite.ask_question. Pass the satellite as entity_id and store the result in a response variable:

action: assist_satellite.ask_question
data:
  entity_id: assist_satellite.kitchen
  question: What kind of music would you like to listen to?
  answers:
    - id: jazz
      sentences:
        - "[some] jazz [music] [please]"
        - something spicy
    - id: rock
      sentences:
        - "[some] rock [music] [please]"
        - something with a beat
response_variable: answer

This asks a question on assist_satellite.kitchen and stores the matched answer in the answer response variable.

Options in YAML

Each entry in answers has the following structure:

• id: A unique identifier for the answer, which is returned when the response matches.
• sentences: A list of sentence templates to match the response against.

Sentence templates can contain wildcard {slots} that capture part of the response. For example, play {album} by {artist} matches “play the white album by the beatles”, storing “the white album” in slots.album and “the beatles” in slots.artist.

Response data

The action returns the matched answer in the response variable, with the following fields:

• id: The ID of the matching answer, or empty if nothing matched.
• sentence: The transcribed text of the response.
• slots: The values captured by any wildcard {slots} in the matched sentence.

If you leave out answers, the action does not try to match anything, and the transcribed response is available in sentence.

Good to know

• A chime plays before the question by default. To use your own sound, set a preannounce media ID. To turn the chime off, set preannounce to false.
• Unlike most actions, this one takes the satellite as an entity_id value rather than a target.

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

These actions work well alongside this one:

• Announce on satellite: Announces a message on an Assist satellite.

• Start conversation on satellite: Starts a conversation from an Assist satellite.