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Heartbeats

Make an agent act on a schedule without being asked, with quiet hours and a stopping point.

A heartbeat names a skill (what to do), an agent (who does it, with its tools), a schedule, and a surface where its message lands. It keeps a small state between firings, so it can remember what it already asked. It stops when its skill marks the job complete, or after a set number of firings.

Mantle ships one: Brain health, a weekly check of capacity and search quality that stays silent unless something needs attention.

Before you start

Write the skill first. A heartbeat’s skill describes the job for one firing. See Skills and tools.

Create a heartbeat

  1. Open Settings > Heartbeats and click New heartbeat.
  2. Fill in Name, then pick the Agent and the Skill.
  3. Under Schedule, choose:
    • interval: every so many minutes, with optional jitter.
    • once: one firing at a set time.
    • manual: only when you click Fire now.
  4. Under Surface, choose telegram or web.
  5. Under Gates, choose none, sensible or custom:
    • Quiet from / Quiet to: no firing in these hours (your profile timezone unless you set another).
    • Min idle: skip if you were active in the last few minutes.
    • Cooldown: the least time between two firings.
  6. Optionally set Earliest at and Max fires.
  7. Save.

Gates default to nothing. A heartbeat with no gates fires exactly on schedule, at night too.

Manage heartbeats

  • Pause and Resume stop and restart a heartbeat.
  • Fire now runs it once, straight away.
  • Open a heartbeat to see its state and recent firings, including the ones a gate skipped. Each run links to its trace.

When you reply to a heartbeat’s message, the normal assistant answers, knowing the heartbeat is open, and updates or completes it.

Mind the cost

Every firing is a model call, even when it sends nothing. A frequent heartbeat on an expensive agent shows up on the spend graph. Give its agent only the tool groups the job needs.

Check it worked

Click Fire now, then open the heartbeat. The firing appears in its log with a link to the trace.

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