Process conversation

The Process conversation action sends a line of text to a conversation agent, which interprets it and acts on it, just like a spoken or typed command to your assistant.

This is useful when another part of your setup produces text that you want Home Assistant to act on. For example, you can forward a message received from a chat integration to your assistant, or drive an automation from a sentence you build with a template.

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 send text to a conversation agent 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. From the search box, search for and select Conversation: Process conversation.
6. Enter the Text to process. Optionally, choose an Agent, a Language, and a Conversation ID.
7. Select Save.

This action does not support targets. In the UI, you are not prompted to choose an area, device, entity, or label.

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 conversation.process. A basic example looks like this:

action: conversation.process
data:
  text: "Turn on the kitchen lights"

This sends the text to the default conversation agent, which acts on it.

Options in YAML

Response data

When you store the result in a response variable, this action returns the conversation agent’s response, including the spoken reply and the result of the intent. The response has the same structure as the /api/conversation/process API.

The reply text is then available as {{ agent_response.response.speech.plain.speech }}. The automation below shows how to capture this reply and send it back to a chat.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Developer tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

More examples

Real scenarios where this action shows up in automations and scripts. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: reply to a chat message with your assistant

When a message arrives from a chat integration, forward its text to the conversation agent, then send the agent’s spoken reply back to the chat. This processes the message and uses the response in a single automation.

• Trigger: A chat integration receives a new message
• Action: Conversation: Process conversation, using the message text, and store the result in a response variable
• Action: Send the agent’s reply back to the chat

alias: "Reply to received chat message"
triggers:
  - trigger: event
    event_type: chat_message_received
actions:
  - action: conversation.process
    data:
      text: "{{ trigger.event.data.message }}"
    response_variable: agent_response
  - action: notify.send_message
    target:
      entity_id: notify.my_chat
    data:
      message: "{{ agent_response.response.speech.plain.speech }}"

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:

• Reload conversation agents: Reloads the intent configuration of conversation agents.