# Dashboard Card Types

Home Assistant provides 39 built-in card types. For card-specific documentation, fetch from GitHub on demand.

## Available Card Types

alarm-panel, area, button, calendar, clock, conditional, distribution, energy, entities, entity-filter, entity, gauge, glance, grid, heading, history-graph, horizontal-stack, humidifier, iframe, light, logbook, map, markdown, media-control, picture-elements, picture-entity, picture-glance, picture, plant-status, sensor, shopping-list, shortcut, statistic, statistics-graph, thermostat, tile, todo-list, vertical-stack, weather-forecast

**Note:** The HA docs URL pattern also covers 4 view types (`masonry`, `panel`, `sections`, `sidebar`) — these are set at the view level via `"type"` in view config, NOT inside card arrays. See `references/dashboard-guide.md#view-types`.

## Fetching Card Documentation

To get detailed documentation for a specific card type, fetch from the Home Assistant docs:

```
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/refs/heads/current/source/_dashboards/{card_type}.markdown
```

Replace `{card_type}` with the card name from the list above (e.g., `tile`, `grid`, `button`).

If the MCP server registers resource URI templates for card docs, prefer those over raw GitHub fetches.

## Quick Card Selection Guide

| Need                                 | Card                                                         |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Control any entity                   | `tile` (modern default)                                      |
| Layout multiple cards in columns     | `grid`                                                       |
| Navigation button or Assist launcher | `shortcut` (2026.5+) or `button` with `tap_action: navigate` |
| Room overview with controls          | `area`                                                       |
| Historical data graph                | `history-graph` or `statistics-graph`                        |
| Sensor value display                 | `sensor` or `gauge`                                          |
| Proportional data across entities    | `distribution`                                               |
| Show/hide cards conditionally        | `conditional`                                                |
| Embed external page                  | `iframe`                                                     |
| Rich text / instructions             | `markdown`                                                   |
| Camera or image with overlays        | `picture-elements`                                           |
