Heartbeats (scheduled agent runs)

A heartbeat runs an agent on a schedule. Heartbeats run on your desktop at the set times, whether or not the Android app is open. Use them for agents that should check, summarize or report on something regularly, for example "every morning at 8:00, read the project documents and write a status update".

When to use heartbeats

• A daily or weekly status report from one of your project's team members
• Regular monitoring, for example an agent that checks news feeds for new items
• A summary of what happened since the last run

Heartbeats are optional.

Create a heartbeat

Open the Edit folder sheet for a project or organization (see "Change a folder's settings" on the Projects and rooms page), scroll to Project heartbeats, and tap Add heartbeat. The project needs at least one member first.

• Member: the project member who does the work.
• Goal: what the agent should do on each run.
• Schedule: when to run. See the formats below.
• Max runs per day: a limit from 1 to 1440.
• Surface criteria (optional): a plain-language rule for which reports should be posted, for example "only post when there's a real anomaly".
• Auto-surface target (optional): a conversation to post reports to, or Overlay only (no target conversation) to keep them out of your chats.
• Enabled: turn the heartbeat on or off without deleting it. You can still run a disabled heartbeat by hand.
• Allow self-config: lets the agent change its own goal, schedule, surface criteria and on/off state. The schedule format and the daily limit still apply, and every change is recorded.

Schedule formats

• @hourly: every hour, on the hour.
• @daily at HH:MM: once a day at that local time, for example @daily at 08:00.
• @weekly: once a week, on Monday at midnight.
• @weekly on DAY at HH:MM: once a week at that day and time, for example @weekly on FRI at 17:00. Use MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI, SAT or SUN.
• @interval N: every N minutes. N must be 5 or more, for example @interval 30.
• Empty: the heartbeat runs only when you start it.

Run, edit or remove a heartbeat

Each heartbeat row in Project heartbeats has three icons: run now (the play icon), edit, and remove. After you tap run now, the run appears on the Heartbeat activity screen.

You cannot cancel a running heartbeat from Android. Cancel it on the desktop.

Heartbeat activity

In the Edit folder sheet, tap Activity next to Project heartbeats. The Heartbeat activity screen is read-only and has three sections:

• Next fires: what is scheduled to run soon
• Recent runs: what ran recently, and the outcome
• Audit log: changes to heartbeat settings

Heartbeat reports

Each run produces a report. If the heartbeat has a target conversation and the report meets its surface criteria, the report is posted there. Otherwise it waits on the desktop, where you can post or dismiss it.

Limit reports in a conversation

In Conversation settings, the Heartbeat section has Auto-surface heartbeat reports, which lets heartbeat reports post into this conversation, and a Daily cap. The first time you turn it on, the app suggests a cap.