HA's Modes, Presets & Actions

(the following ignores cooling for now)

HA Climate entities have a MODE that can be in one of three (noun):

• Off: will never act to raise the current temp to a setpoint: Idle or / Heating is not applicable
• Heat: when required, will move from Idle to Heating to raise the temp to the setpoint
• Auto: same as Heat, but the setpoint cannot be changed by the user (without first changing to Heat)

If not Off, HA Climate entities may be taking an ACTION (verb):

• Heating: acting to raise the Climate's current_temperature to the (target) temperature (a.k.a. setpoint)
• Idle: not doing anything, not providing any heat

(all this is further complicated if your system can cool as well as heat)

** everything else ** is a PRESET - the archetype being an Away mode.

For example, if your TCS (an evohome term, aka controller, system, house, location) is in:

• evohome's Away mode, you can't change the setpoints of the zones, so that is Auto rather than Heat
• evohome's Eco/Boost mode, you can change the zone setpoints, so that is Heat rather than Auto
• evohome's HeatingOff mode, then it is Off for HA

With the the exception of HeatingOff, all evohome modes will map to either Auto or Heat - you will need to look at the PRESET to know.