From 2af50329f42f049f4ebbaacdaf38ee042e8cebed Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "J. Nick Koston" <nick@home-assistant.io>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:36:08 -1000
Subject: [PATCH] Document design trade-off for state==0 reseed

---
 esphome/core/helpers.cpp | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/esphome/core/helpers.cpp b/esphome/core/helpers.cpp
index f01c97e359..dc8e865d78 100644
--- a/esphome/core/helpers.cpp
+++ b/esphome/core/helpers.cpp
@@ -164,6 +164,9 @@ uint32_t fnv1_hash(const char *str) {
 static uint32_t splitmix32_state;  // NOLINT(cppcoreguidelines-avoid-non-const-global-variables)
 
 uint32_t random_uint32() {
+  // State of 0 means unseeded. The state will wrap back to 0 after 2^32 calls,
+  // triggering one extra random_bytes() call — an acceptable trade-off vs. adding
+  // a separate bool flag (4 bytes BSS + branch on every call).
   if (splitmix32_state == 0) {
     random_bytes(reinterpret_cast<uint8_t *>(&splitmix32_state), sizeof(splitmix32_state));
   }