Timers

Timers on chores and rewards: give a chore an optional timer ("clean for 30 minutes") and it gains a ▶ Start button that counts down and then completes the chore itself; it obeys the approval rules you already have, so it either lands in Awaiting Approval or pays out instantly. Give a catalog reward a timer ("2 hours of gaming") and Use spends the stars and starts the countdown, with a notification when time's up.
Active Timers card: every timer running in the house on one board: chore timers, reward timers, and quick household timers, each card tinted with the colour of whoever it's assigned to (the same per-person colour you set on the Users tab), with unassigned ones in neutral grey. Live countdowns, soonest-finishing first, and a ✕ to stop one.
Quick household timers: ＋ Start Timer on that card opens a small modal with four one-tap presets (5m / 15m / 30m / 1h), a custom-minutes box for anything else, an optional label ("Oven", "Sam's turn") and an optional person to assign it to. Assign it and that person gets the notification in their colour; leave it unassigned and it's a house timer anyone can stop, which notifies everyone when it finishes.
They keep running with everything closed: timers live on the Family Hub backend, so one still finishes, completes its chore and sends its notification with every dashboard shut and the tablet asleep, and picks up at the right time remaining after a reload or a Home Assistant restart.
Native Home Assistant timer helpers are created for you automatically. As of v1.110.3, Family Hub creates and maintains a real timer.* helper for every household member, named "Family Hub <Name>", entity id timer.family_hub_<name> (e.g. timer.family_hub_emma), plus 4 shared "Family Hub Family 1"–"Family Hub Family 4" helpers, always present, for timers nobody in particular is assigned to (the oven, a board game). These appear automatically whenever you save Settings after adding a member, and are backfilled the first time the Active Timers card loads on an upgraded household. Nothing to click. A timer is handed to the assigned person's own helper first, then a free shared one, so "Emma's" countdown always lands on timer.family_hub_emma itself: genuine timer.* entities, visible in Developer Tools, droppable on any dashboard, and usable directly as an automation trigger ("when timer.family_hub_emma finishes…"). Removing someone from Family Hub deliberately leaves their helper in place (same as everything else a removed member leaves behind). Delete it yourself from Settings → Devices & Services → Helpers if you don't want it any more. You can still hand-create extra timer.family_hub*-named helpers of your own; Family Hub adopts those too once its own are all busy.
Automations: which chore or reward is a timer actually for? A native timer.* entity's own state has no room for that; it's just a countdown. Two things close the gap, so a plain HA automation can answer "what is this timer, and who's it for" without any Family Hub-specific knowledge:
- A sensor.* entity per currently-running timer (state = its kind: chore / reward / standalone) carrying chore_id, reward_item_id, title, user_id, user_name, native_timer_entity_id (the timer.* helper it's adopted onto, if any), started_at, duration_minutes and finishes_at as attributes. Query it any time from Developer Tools → States or a template.
- A custom family_hub_timer_finished event, fired the instant any timer of any kind completes, carrying the same fields as event data. This is the natural trigger for "when X finishes, do Y"; no attribute lookup needed.
Example: lock a kid's computer when their screen-time reward ends.
```
automation:
  - alias: "Lock Sam's computer when screen time ends"
    triggers:
      - trigger: event
        event_type: family_hub_timer_finished
    condition: >
      {{ trigger.event.data.kind == 'reward'
         and trigger.event.data.user_id == 'YOUR_SAMS_HA_USER_ID'
         and 'screen' in (trigger.event.data.title | lower) }}
    actions:
      - action: lock.lock
        target:
          entity_id: lock.sams_computer
```
(Swap the condition for whatever identifies "this is the screen-time reward" for your household. Matching on reward_item_id against the catalog item's id is more robust than matching on title text once you know it.) The same information is available as a state trigger instead, if you'd rather watch the sensor:
```
automation:
  - alias: "Lock Sam's computer when screen time ends (sensor variant)"
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: sensor.family_hub_timer_2_hours_of_gaming
        to: null  # the sensor is removed (fired OR cancelled) once its timer ends
    actions:
      - action: lock.lock
        target:
          entity_id: lock.sams_computer
```