Two things you already read are the same thing

Part 1 told you the first start takes 3-8 minutes and that the workspace can look broken while it happens. Part 11 told you the video pipeline needs a full set of tools before it can record, narrate, or subtitle anything.

Those are not two events. They are one event described twice. The first 3-8 minutes are the tools arriving.

Once that clicks, the lines beginning video-tools-init: in the Log tab stop reading as errors and start reading as a progress bar.

Three groups of tools, two of which you download

video-tools is not one program. It is a collective name for three groups, and only the first two are in the number people quote.

So the files that land in /data/pi-agent/ on your first start are the top two rows, roughly 600-700 MB together. The exact figure moves with Playwright and pip versions, which is why the guide rounds it to 720 MB. The third row arrived earlier, inside the roughly 300 MB image.

Can you skip it if you never make videos?

Not through any supported setting. Three reasons, and none of them are satisfying:

• There is no off switch. The initializer runs as a startup service alongside the workspace. The Configuration tab has no option that disables it.
• VIDEO_PIPELINE_ENABLED=false does not do it. That variable does not turn off the add-on's initializer. It is a common wrong guess.
• Avoiding it means your own build. You would fork the add-on repository, remove the service, build an image, and publish it yourself — much more work than leaving 720 MB on a disk.

On a 32 GB drive, the Home Assistant minimum, 720 MB is about 2% of the disk, and it normally happens once. If that 2% is decisive, the storage is probably too small for comfortable Home Assistant use anyway.

Two things start at once, and only one of them is slow

When you select Start, two processes run at once. The workspace is a Node.js app that needs neither Chromium nor Python to hold a conversation, so it is ready in seconds. The tools download behind it.

flowchart TD
  S["You select Start"] --> W["pi-web is ready
a few seconds — you can chat"]
  S --> V{"Sentinel file present
and venv/bin/python3 runnable?"}
  V -->|"yes, every later start"| K["Skip. Exits almost immediately"]
  V -->|"no, first start"| A["1 · Create the Python environment
about 10 seconds"]
  A --> B["2 · pip installs playwright, edge-tts,
pyyaml, mutagen
about 30 seconds to 2 minutes"]
  B --> C["3 · Playwright downloads Chromium
about 2-6 minutes, most of the wait"]
  C --> D["4 · Write the sentinel file
/data/pi-agent/.video-tools-installed"]

The check tests two things, not one: the sentinel must exist and venv/bin/python3 must be runnable. Restoring the sticker without the box does not fool it.

That is also the answer to when the 720 MB comes back. Restarting the add-on, restarting Home Assistant, and normal upgrades all leave both in place, so nothing downloads. It comes back in three situations: you uninstall without keeping data, you restore a snapshot on new hardware, or you deliberately use the reset switch.

Watching it happen

Open the add-on's Log tab. A normal run reads like this:

The tab itself is below. This capture comes from a workspace that has been running for a while, so the install lines have long since scrolled away and what fills the frame is ordinary traffic logging — which is exactly what the same tab looks like once the download is behind you.

The Log tabThe only place that tells you whether the download is moving. Everything else looks the same whether it is working or not.Captured after startup, not during it

• The Log tab sits along the top of the add-on page, beside Info, Documentation and Configuration. It is the first place to look for any later problem too.
• Search logs, the box above the output, is how you find the lines you want in a busy log. Typing video-tools-init there leaves only the install messages.
• The body of the frame is web server access logging — repeated GET /api/agent/running/events requests from your own browser, each with a timestamp and a browser string. Routine, not errors.
• Those request lines carry a session= identifier for your ingress session. Trim it before you paste a log anywhere public.
• Live, bottom right, means the view is following new output as it arrives. On a first start you can leave it open and watch.

Your snapshots leave the 720 MB behind on purpose

Pi Agent tells Home Assistant to exclude certain files from snapshots, and the video tools are on that list. This is intentional, not an oversight.

Two reasons. Size: adding roughly 700 MB to every snapshot means 12 monthly snapshots cost about 12 GB for this add-on alone. And need: after a restore the check fails on the missing Python environment, so the tools install themselves again. The restore takes about five minutes longer, and you save 700 MB on every snapshot.

reset_video_tools, and when to leave it alone

The Configuration tab has a switch called reset_video_tools. It does one thing: at the next start it deletes the sentinel, the Python environment and the Chromium cache, so the whole 720 MB comes down clean.

It is a container option, so it lives on the add-on's own Configuration tab rather than anywhere in Home Assistant settings. That tab looks like this:

The Configuration tabThe Options panel, scrolled to the key fields at the top of the list. The reset switch is in this same form, out of frame below.

• Configuration is one of the four tabs across the top of the add-on page — Info, Documentation, Configuration, Log — not somewhere in Home Assistant settings. Path: Settings → Add-ons → Woow HA Pi Agent → Configuration.
• Options is the single form that holds every container setting, one field per line. The capture stops partway down it, so scroll for the rest.
• The eye icon beside each filled field reveals a value that is otherwise shown as dots. Useful for checking a pasted key, and a reason not to screenshot this tab with the values open.

Scroll down that form and you reach reset_video_tools, a true/false switch, with the SAVE button at the foot of the page.

1. Step 1

   Open the Configuration tab

   Go to Settings → Add-ons → Pi Agent → Configuration.

2. Step 2

   Turn reset_video_tools from false to true, then SAVE

   Nothing is deleted at this point. The switch is only a note for the next start.

3. Step 3

   Go back to the Info tab and select RESTART

   On restart the add-on runs rm -rf /data/pi-agent/.video-tools-installed /data/pi-agent/venv /data/pi-agent/playwright-cache and logs reset_video_tools=true — clearing venv + playwright-cache + sentinel. Then the 3-8 minute download starts over.

4. Step 4

   Check the log, and restart once more if it skipped

   The reset and the initializer run in parallel, so the initializer can read the old sentinel a moment before the reset deletes it. If the log says it skipped and no install sequence follows, restart once more.

5. Step 5

   Leave the switch alone afterwards

   Since v0.13.0 the add-on turns it back off itself and logs reset_video_tools auto-reverted to false. Turn it off by hand only if you see Could not auto-revert reset_video_tools. Older tutorials tell you to always do it manually — that advice is out of date.

Is this actually your problem?

The switch is an escape hatch, not maintenance. The rule is short: reset when the tools are broken, not to make them feel clean.

Telling a slow download from a dead one

If a stage produces no new log output for more than ten minutes and shows no error, check two things first. Open Settings → System → Network and confirm the host has internet at all. Then look at CPU and memory on the add-on's Info tab — activity there means it is still working, so wait.

Where to go from here