@s1nbad (Peter) posted a new topic, subject "Force only configuartion.yaml". It read:

   I want my configuration.yaml to dictate all my configuration
    
    I do not use auto-discovery and have standardized on mqtt.  
    whenever I rename, delete or edit a device in the configuration.yaml the old entry remains in the UI as “unavailable”. I know I can delete each old entry in the UI but this is not scalable.
    
    How do I force home assistant to ignore anything but what I have configured within my YAML file.  
    Is there a config file or database I can flush at startup ?

So @tom_l replied

    Check out the contents of the config/.storage folder
    
    Particularly,
    
    core.device_registry  
    core.entity_registry
    
    They are text files containing json formatted configuration.
    
    Make a backup of this folder before deleting anything.

After which, @s1nbad (Peter) added

    exactly what I was looking for.
    
    However it seems I need to change my thinking. The push to use the UI and the move away from YAML is great for a limited number of devices but not so scalable. From the developer docs it seems json is the way forward and another learning curve for me.
    
    thanks for your help


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