Sense Labs home-energy monitoring — no official API, viable via unofficial wrapper (PARKED)

DARE.CO.UK · PARKED SKETCH · 2026-05-20

Mirrored from ~/.claude/.../memory/project_sense_energy_api_parked.md. This is a design sketch parked for future build — read for context, not as a current deliverable.

Dan 2026-05-20 asked about Sense Labs developer API. HEAD-checked + confirmed his hunch — no official API (sense.com/developers, developer.sense.com both 404). BUT an established unofficial Python wrapper (sense-energy on PyPI, github scottbonline/sense — both 200) reverse-engineers the same backend the iOS/Android app uses. Viable for daily-pull integration into pa.gf.cx, with the caveat that Sense could break it any time. Parked; resume on third occurrence of “I wonder if the X is drawing power” or when energy reconciliation becomes load-bearing.

Dan, 2026-05-20:

“about sense labs app for monitoring home-energy, does it have a developer api access, likely not, small api, but cool idea”

Status — no official API, but an unofficial path exists

Conclusion: Sense has deliberately not published a public developer API. The 403 on the help article suggests they have an internal policy doc explaining why, but it’s not publicly readable. Reasonable guess: they want to monetise data via Sense Plus subscription tier + Schneider Electric partnership; opening an API undercuts both.

But — sense-energy (Python) has been maintained since ~2018 and reverse-engineers the WebSocket protocol the iOS/Android app uses to talk to Sense’s cloud. Same data the user already sees in their app, just pullable via Python.

What an integration would look like

Same OAuth-pull-render template as eBay / Harvest / Privacy (already a 4th parked sketch in this family). The shape:

~/bin/sense_pull.py        # daily / hourly pull from sense-energy wrapper
  ├─ authenticates with Sense via email + password (stored in 1Password)
  ├─ pulls current-state realtime feed (snapshot)
  ├─ pulls trend data (hourly / daily kWh + cost)
  ├─ pulls detected-device breakdown (the "ML found your fridge" data)
  ├─ writes ~/Downloads/sense_pull_<date>.{md,json}
  └─ catalog picks it up via REPORT_PATTERNS (publish.py)

What makes Sense data uniquely interesting for pa.gf.cx

Energy data has a cross-reference angle that other API integrations don’t:

The compounding angle: Sense data + equipment master records + Harvest expenses (electricity bill) would let pa.gf.cx answer questions like “how much did the John Deere cost to run this season” or “is the pool pump drifting upward over time” — operationally useful, currently unanswerable.

Risk profile

Cost

Build estimate (when triggered)

Total: ~3 hours active work.

Resume conditions (build when ANY hold)

1. Third occurrence of “I wonder if the X is drawing power” — the wondering-without-data signal
2. Electricity bill anomaly — month-over-month spike that needs root-cause investigation
3. Building out pa/utilities/ as a system on the landing — Sense becomes the data backbone
4. Pool / well-system records get built — Sense data justifies the master records by surfacing usage patterns
5. A second smart-home API gets integrated (Hubitat / Home Assistant / Ecobee) — Sense becomes natural to add as part of the same pull cycle

Skip / defer

• Sense app on the phone is already easy to glance at; if curiosity-driven, manual is fine
• If the wrapper breaks and Sense doesn’t open an official path, no fallback — abandon gracefully
• Don’t build until at least one of the resume conditions fires; this is speculative until then

Today’s standing in the API integration family

This is the 4th parked OAuth-pull-render sketch banked today:

The template is now well-proven across 5 integrations. Each new one drops in faster.

Sibling memories

• feedback_1password_custom_concealed_fields.md — credential storage discipline
• feedback_test_links_before_shipping.md — HEAD-checked all 7 URLs in this memo (5×200, 2×404, 1×403, 1×000) before writing
• feedback_check_devreports_before_infra_gap_analysis.md — when resuming, check ~/bin/sense_* + ~/Downloads/sense_pull_* first
• project_harvest_api_integration_parked.md — sibling parked sketch, same template family
• project_dare_messaging_service_v1_built.md — Pushover messaging service that an energy anomaly could feed into (alert Dan when something draws unexpected power)

The aphorism

The official API doesn’t exist — the unofficial one is the API. Trust the wrapper, plan for the day it breaks, build the integration anyway.