Home Assistant LLM Assistant in 2026: Add a Private AI Voice to HA (90k Stars) with Ollama - Full Setup

Home Assistant (89,719 stars) now has native LLM support: connect an Ollama model to control your smart home by voice or chat - fully private, no cloud, no monthly fee.

💡 What You Will Learn

Home Assistant (89,719 stars) now has native LLM support: connect an Ollama model to control your smart home by voice or chat - fully private, no cloud, no monthly fee.

📜 Table of Contents

• The short answer
• The setup
• Real numbers
• FAQ

The short answer

Home Assistant (89,719 stars, Apache-2.0) is the leading open-source smart home platform, and since 2024 it has built-in LLM integration: you can point it at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint - including local Ollama - and control devices with natural language.

The setup

Step 1 - Run Ollama alongside HA

ollama pull qwen2.5:3b   # small model for voice responses
ollama pull llama3.1:8b  # bigger model for device control

Step 2 - Add the OpenAI-compatible integration in HA

Settings - Devices - Add Integration - "OpenAI Conversation" - and set the API URL to http://<ollama-host>:11434/v1 with a dummy key.

Step 3 - Configure the voice assistant

1. Enable the "Assist" feature in Settings - Voice assistants.
2. Pick your local model as the conversation agent.
3. Use the Wyoming protocol with a local STT (Whisper) and TTS (Piper) for fully offline voice.

Real numbers

• HA has 20,000+ integrations covering most smart home hardware.
• A 3B model answers voice commands in 1-3 seconds on a decent CPU - fine for light control.
• Offline voice chain: Whisper (106,660 stars) STT + Ollama LLM + Piper TTS = zero cloud, zero cost.

FAQ

Q: Can the LLM control devices safely? A: Yes - HA exposes allowed entities only, and you can restrict which devices the model can touch in the integration config.

Q: What if I want cloud models? A: The same integration accepts OpenAI or Anthropic API keys - but then voice audio and commands go to the cloud.

Q: Does it work with Apple HomeKit? A: Yes - HA bridges to HomeKit, so the LLM assistant can control HomeKit devices too.

❓ FAQ

Can the LLM control devices safely?

Yes - HA exposes allowed entities only, and you can restrict which devices the model can touch in the integration config.

What if I want cloud models?

The same integration accepts OpenAI or Anthropic API keys - but then voice audio and commands go to the cloud.

Does it work with Apple HomeKit?

Yes - HA bridges to HomeKit, so the LLM assistant can control HomeKit devices too.