Create labels

Give owners, device types and departments one name each, so the rest of your config stops spelling the same thing three ways.

What this step does

A label is a declared value in a small vocabulary, identified by the pair (kind, id). There are exactly three kinds — owner, device-type, department — and each one feeds a single scalar on a [[devices]] entry: owner, device_type, department. The same id can exist under two different kinds; --kind is how you tell them apart.

Labels are advisory, not referential: the resolver never reads [[labels]], so they never decide what gets filtered. Their job is to keep your device inventory legible and greppable — one spelling of “kids”, not three. A value on a device that isn’t in the vocabulary still loads and still filters normally; it just logs a DEVICE_METADATA_UNKNOWN_LABEL warning once, and only once at least one label of that kind exists. An empty vocabulary means “not curated yet”, not “everything is wrong” — you can start using owner or department on devices before you’ve declared a single label for it.

Declare a vocabulary

Pick a handful of values per kind — a household or small office rarely needs more than three or four:

warden label add edoardo --kind owner --display-name "Edoardo"
warden label add anna --kind owner --display-name "Anna"
warden label add reception --kind owner --display-name "Reception desk"

warden label add laptop --kind device-type --display-name "Laptop"
warden label add phone --kind device-type --display-name "Phone"
warden label add tablet --kind device-type --display-name "Tablet"

warden label add family --kind department --display-name "Family"
warden label add guest --kind department --display-name "Guest"
warden label add reception --kind department --display-name "Reception"

--description is stored but never read back by anything else — use it as a note to yourself, not a mechanism. warden label list prints the vocabulary grouped by kind:

owner
  edoardo      Edoardo
  anna         Anna
  reception    Reception desk

device-type
  laptop       Laptop
  phone        Phone
  tablet       Tablet

department
  family       Family
  guest        Guest
  reception    Reception

Use it on a device

Once a kind has at least one label, set the matching field when you register a device:

warden device add kids-ipad --ip 192.168.1.44 --owner anna --device-type tablet --department family

See manage devices for the rest of the device fields — IP/MAC identity, profile assignment, overlays.

Disambiguate a shared id

reception was declared under both owner and department above. label show on its own is ambiguous; pass --kind to pick one:

warden label show reception --kind department

Removing a label

warden label remove refuses while any device still carries that value — clear or reassign the field on every device using it first, then remove the label:

warden label remove tablet --kind device-type

The TOML form

warden label add writes a [[labels]] entry with the same fields as its flags:

[[labels]]
id = "anna"
kind = "owner"
display_name = "Anna"

[[labels]]
id = "reception"
kind = "department"
display_name = "Reception"
description = "Shared front-desk devices"

CLI reference

In the TUI

Configuration section (5) → Labels leaf (g b):

See also

• Manage devices — assign owner, device-type and department on a device, and the rest of its fields.
• Devices entity reference — the full device schema.
• Create profiles — profiles decide filtering; labels only organize the inventory around them.