Stop

The Stop building block stops the automation or script. The next steps don’t run. Use it to end a run early, for example, inside an If-then when something is not as expected. A script can also use it to return a response.

Using this building block from the user interface

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes and open an automation. To edit a script, open the Scripts tab and open the script.
2. In the Then do section of an automation, or the Sequence section of a script, select Add action.
3. Select Blocks, then select Stop.
4. Optional: In Reason for stopping, enter why the run stops. The reason is shown in the logs and in the trace.
5. Optional: To return a response from a script, in The name of the variable to use as response, enter the name of the variable that holds the response.
6. Optional: To mark the run as failed, turn on Stop because of an unexpected error.
7. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this building block in YAML

In YAML, use stop with the reason:

stop: "Stop running the rest of the sequence"

To return a response from a script, add response_variable with the name of the variable that holds the response:

stop: "Stop running the rest of the sequence"
response_variable: "my_response_variable"

To mark the run as failed, add error: true:

stop: "Well, that was unexpected!"
error: true

Options in YAML

Good to know

• Stop ends the whole run, not only the current building block. Inside Run in parallel, the other actions that already started still finish.
• To only stop the steps that follow in the current sequence when something is not true, use a Condition building block instead.
• If the variable in The name of the variable to use as response doesn’t exist, the run stops with an error.

Examples

Script and automation: Return the outdoor temperature from a script

The script get_outdoor_temperature puts the outdoor temperature in a variable, and returns it with Stop. The automation calls the script every morning, receives the response in its own variable, and sends it in a notification.

To receive a response, the automation must call the script directly, as script.get_outdoor_temperature. The script.turn_on action doesn’t wait for the script and doesn’t return a response. For details, refer to Waiting for a script to complete.

• Script: Get outdoor temperature
  • Action: Define variables
    • result: the outdoor temperature
  • Action: Stop
    • Reason for stopping: Return the outdoor temperature
    • The name of the variable to use as response: result
• Automation: Morning temperature
  • Trigger: Time
    • At time: 07:00
  • Action: Get outdoor temperature (the script)
    • Response variable: weather
  • Action: Send a notification message
    • Target: My Device (notify.my_device)
    • Message: It's {{ weather.temperature }} °C outside.

get_outdoor_temperature:
  alias: "Get outdoor temperature"
  sequence:
    - variables:
        result:
          temperature: "{{ states('sensor.outdoor_temperature') }}"
    - stop: "Return the outdoor temperature"
      response_variable: result

alias: "Morning temperature"
triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "07:00:00"
actions:
  - action: script.get_outdoor_temperature
    response_variable: weather
  - action: notify.send_message
    target:
      entity_id: notify.my_device
    data:
      message: "It's {{ weather.temperature }} °C outside."