[bouke]

HomeKit can pair only once, to pair it another time it needs to be unpaired first; a design choice unrelated to HA. But you can “share” your home in the Home app. That will add additional “controllers” to those devices (HA being the device here).

[bussyfumes]

Thank you, I thought so. It'd still be nice if they could print it somewhere because that was my first impression so I assume other people not familiar with HA will run into it as well.

Regarding sharing, I tried it, but it says "A home hub is required to add or remove accessories, scenes or people". I looked it up and apparently you were able to use an iPad as the home hub which you'd share access to, but since a certain version of iPadOS/iOS it can only be either an Apple TV or a Home Pod. I think Apple is focusing on being able to access your home setup anywhere so it requires a device that is supposed to stay at home all the time. Still a shame because it hinders offline-first setups like mine.

[bouke]

Mind you, HomeKit really is offline-first. The home hub does operate as the internet bridge, but on your local network you don’t need internet to operate your home.