Deploy from the command line

If you only want a dashboard, installing Orb or Field from the Marketplace needs no terminal. This page is the other way in: for a deploy you script or run from CI, a Home Assistant that manages its resources in YAML, a dashboard you write yourself, or the same steps you’ll take later with a skin of your own. Pick one way per skin; each registers its own copy.

You don’t need to clone or build anything. Each skin’s package ships its resource, the one file Home Assistant loads: orb-dashboard.js in @dashhaus/orb, field-dashboard.js in @dashhaus/field. A small command-line tool copies it into Home Assistant, then creates the skin’s own dashboard, which follows the skin as it updates, and any dashboard of your own: the skin’s card with your cards and rows. After that you change layouts in Home Assistant itself.

CI runs these steps on every change: it packs the release, installs the skins’ packages and @dashhaus/deploy into an empty folder, writes each skin’s config and deploys it into a simulated Home Assistant.

What you need

Home Assistant with an admin user.
Node.js 22 or newer on the computer you deploy from.
A way to copy a file into Home Assistant’s /config/www folder: the Terminal & SSH add-on with your public key in its authorized_keys, the Samba add-on’s share mounted on your computer, or a Docker volume.

Deploy

Make a folder for your dashboards and install the skins you want and the deploy tool:

mkdir my-dashboards && cd my-dashboards
npm init -y
npm install @dashhaus/orb @dashhaus/field @dashhaus/deploy

Create a .env file in that folder with three settings:

HA_URL=http://homeassistant.local:8123
HA_TOKEN=your-long-lived-access-token
HA_WWW=root@homeassistant.local:/config/www

Setting	What it is	For example
`HA_URL`	the address you open Home Assistant at	`http://homeassistant.local:8123`
`HA_TOKEN`	an admin's token: Profile → Security → Long-lived access tokens	`<long-lived access token>`
`HA_WWW`	Home Assistant's /config/www: user@host:/path over SSH, or a mounted folder	`root@homeassistant.local:/config/www`
`HA_SSH_PORT` (optional)	only when SSH isn't on port 22	`22222`

HA_WWW is an SSH address like the one above, or a local folder such as /Volumes/config/www. Only the deploy tool uses HA_TOKEN; it never goes into a file it uploads. Keep .env out of version control.

Create dashboard.config.mjs next to it. It names the files to upload and the dashboards to create:

import { resourceFile as field } from "@dashhaus/field/resource";
import { resourceFile as orb } from "@dashhaus/orb/resource";

/** @type {import("@dashhaus/deploy/config").DeployConfig} */
export default {
  pageTitle: "Home",
  // Each skin's resource, the file its package ships; leave out the one you don't use.
  files: [orb, field],
  dashboards: [
    // Each skin's own dashboard, on its strategy: it follows the skin as it updates.
    { path: "home-orb", title: "Home (Orb)", icon: "mdi:home-variant", strategy: { type: "custom:orb-dashboard" } },
    { path: "home-field", title: "Home (Field)", icon: "mdi:knob", strategy: { type: "custom:field-dashboard" } },
    // A dashboard of your own: a skin's card with your cards and rows, created once and then yours to edit.
    {
      path: "my-home",
      title: "My home",
      icon: "mdi:floor-plan",
      card: {
        type: "custom:dashhaus-orb",
        title: "Home",
        rows: [
          { title: "Living room", columns: 2, cards: ["light.living_room", "climate.living_room"] },
          { title: "Outside", cards: ["weather.home"] },
        ],
      },
    },
  ],
};

A dashboard with a strategy is the skin’s own: it stores only the strategy, so it lays your house out again each time it opens and follows the skin as it updates. A dashboard with a card is yours: the skin’s card with your cards or rows, created once and then edited in Home Assistant. Each path needs a hyphen; Home Assistant requires one. Keep only the skin you want if you don’t need both. The @type comment lets your editor check the file against @dashhaus/deploy/config; the tool doesn’t need it.

Deploy:
Terminal window
```
npx dashhaus-deploy --skip-build
```
The tool copies each file into www/, registers it as a dashboard resource, and creates each dashboard the first time. --skip-build tells it to use the files as installed, since there’s nothing to build. Every step ends in ✓; the last one, Checking that Home Assistant serves it, fetches the file back from Home Assistant, so a wrong HA_WWW shows up here instead of as a blank dashboard. npx dashhaus-deploy --help prints the options, a config to start from and the .env keys:

Option What it does
--config <file> the config to read (default: dashboard.config.mjs in this folder)
--skip-build upload the files as they are; a skin package's file has nothing to build
--help this text
Reload any Home Assistant tab that was already open, then pick Home (Orb), Home (Field) or My home in the sidebar.

Home Assistant reads its list of resources when a tab opens. Until you reload, an open tab shows the new dashboard in the sidebar but says “Configuration error” instead of drawing it.

Option	What it does
`--config <file>`	the config to read (default: dashboard.config.mjs in this folder)
`--skip-build`	upload the files as they are; a skin package's file has nothing to build
`--help`	this text

Change the layout

A new dashboard lays out every supported entity by area. To choose your own cards, rows and order, open the dashboard and go to ⋮ → Edit dashboard, then the card’s pencil and Show code editor. The preview redraws as you type, and mistakes are listed all together with where they are and what you probably meant:

The card's config has 2 problems:
• rows[1].cards[0] (sensor.bedroom_temperature): unknown key "humdity" — did you mean "humidity"?
• rows[2].cards[3]: scene.movie_night: scene.* entities have no card yet

To put a skin’s card on another dashboard, add Orb or Field from the card picker. It starts from the generated layout for your house. Put it in a Panel view so it gets the full width.

Lay it out in YAML has both skins’ keys, pages and the bottom nav.

Update

Update the packages and run the same command again:

npm update @dashhaus/orb @dashhaus/field @dashhaus/deploy
npx dashhaus-deploy --skip-build

Redeploying replaces each file and leaves your dashboards alone, so layouts you edited in Home Assistant are kept. Open tabs pick up the new version when they reload.