Problem statement
Home Assistant has built a strong technical foundation for credential management by consolidating Matter and Z-Wave door lock handling into a shared, protocol-agnostic backend. This is already paying off: community apps such as Lock Code Manager have adopted the consolidated services directly, validating that the architecture is sound, extensible, and worth building on.
This puts us in a strong position to extend that same coherence further. Alarm panels are a natural next surface to bring into the consolidated model, and the emergence of Aliro as an open mobile credential standard presents a genuine opportunity rather than a gap to close: with Aliro 1.0 just published and certified hardware only beginning to appear, Home Assistant has the chance to build mobile credential support directly on top of an already-proven foundation, and to do so early enough to become the reference open source platform for the standard.
The opportunity is to compound the progress already made: use the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave foundation as a launchpad to extend coherent credential management to alarm panels, and to mobile access via Aliro, while the standard is still young and the field is open for Home Assistant to lead.
Community signals
Apart from the ones mentioned in OpenHomeFoundation/goals#17
-
Recurring community requests for native PIN/code management UI, rather than requiring third-party add-ons (community forum thread: "wth is there no native PIN management UI for locks in Home Assistant").
-
Multiple GitHub Discussions requesting a holistic, cross-platform lock user code manager with unified UI and centralized access tracking (Discussion #2555, Discussion #551 on Matter DoorLock PIN management, architecture Discussion #1000 on native lock code functionality) — the direction these discussions called for is now substantially delivered through the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave backend.
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Lock Code Manager, a community-maintained app, has begun building directly against the new consolidated credential services rather than reimplementing protocol-specific logic — strong validation that the architecture is ready to serve as a platform for the ecosystem, not just an internal implementation detail.
Legacy community solutions (KeyMaster) demonstrated clear demand and proved the appetite for this functionality; the consolidated foundation now offers a path to deliver that experience natively and more broadly.
-
As many manufacturers and test labs use Home Assistant to power their setup, having Aliro support is not only beneficial for our end-users. This signals real inbound interest from the manufacturer and lab side in HA becoming an early, credible Aliro platform. github
Scope & Boundaries
In scope
- Door locks
- Alarm panels
- Extending the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave credential foundation to alarm panels
- Evaluating and adopting Aliro for secure mobile access, building on top of the existing consolidated credential architecture
- Continued support for community apps (e.g. Lock Code Manager) building on the consolidated backend
Not in scope
- Any other device types for now (e.g. garage door openers, gates, generic switches)
- (tbd) Core, user-centric credential management (attaching credentials to an HA user rather than a device) — a promising future direction, intentionally kept out of scope to stay focused
- Z-Wave Aliro support — Z-Wave is not currently supported by the Aliro standard
- Re-architecting the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave foundation — the goal is to build on a proven base, not redesign it
Foreseen solution
No response
Risks & open questions
- As the foundation is now load-bearing for community apps like Lock Code Manager, future changes should be planned with backward compatibility in mind to protect the ecosystem that has formed around it.
- Aliro evaluation should clarify how phone-resident mobile credentials map onto the existing device-level credential model, and whether any extension is needed to support this cleanly.
- Z-Wave and Matter are now aligned at the credential layer; Aliro currently applies to Matter only, so the long-term experience for users with mixed-protocol setups is worth designing for explicitly as Aliro work begins.
- Aliro is a young standard (1.0 published February 2026); hardware availability and certification requirements will likely keep evolving, which favors an iterative rollout.
- Alarm panel support is the newest area in scope; worth validating early whether the lock credential model transfers directly or benefits from panel-specific adaptation.
- Realizing the Aliro opportunity at full strength likely benefits from direct manufacturer collaboration, which is an exciting but distinct workstream from core engineering.
Appetite
No response
Execution issues
No response
Decision log
Problem statement
Home Assistant has built a strong technical foundation for credential management by consolidating Matter and Z-Wave door lock handling into a shared, protocol-agnostic backend. This is already paying off: community apps such as Lock Code Manager have adopted the consolidated services directly, validating that the architecture is sound, extensible, and worth building on.
This puts us in a strong position to extend that same coherence further. Alarm panels are a natural next surface to bring into the consolidated model, and the emergence of Aliro as an open mobile credential standard presents a genuine opportunity rather than a gap to close: with Aliro 1.0 just published and certified hardware only beginning to appear, Home Assistant has the chance to build mobile credential support directly on top of an already-proven foundation, and to do so early enough to become the reference open source platform for the standard.
The opportunity is to compound the progress already made: use the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave foundation as a launchpad to extend coherent credential management to alarm panels, and to mobile access via Aliro, while the standard is still young and the field is open for Home Assistant to lead.
Community signals
Apart from the ones mentioned in OpenHomeFoundation/goals#17
Recurring community requests for native PIN/code management UI, rather than requiring third-party add-ons (community forum thread: "wth is there no native PIN management UI for locks in Home Assistant").
Multiple GitHub Discussions requesting a holistic, cross-platform lock user code manager with unified UI and centralized access tracking (Discussion #2555, Discussion #551 on Matter DoorLock PIN management, architecture Discussion #1000 on native lock code functionality) — the direction these discussions called for is now substantially delivered through the consolidated Matter/Z-Wave backend.
Lock Code Manager, a community-maintained app, has begun building directly against the new consolidated credential services rather than reimplementing protocol-specific logic — strong validation that the architecture is ready to serve as a platform for the ecosystem, not just an internal implementation detail.
Legacy community solutions (KeyMaster) demonstrated clear demand and proved the appetite for this functionality; the consolidated foundation now offers a path to deliver that experience natively and more broadly.
As many manufacturers and test labs use Home Assistant to power their setup, having Aliro support is not only beneficial for our end-users. This signals real inbound interest from the manufacturer and lab side in HA becoming an early, credible Aliro platform. github
Scope & Boundaries
In scope
Not in scope
Foreseen solution
No response
Risks & open questions
Appetite
No response
Execution issues
No response
Decision log