Last updated: 2026-09-30
What is Heartbeat?
A recurring self-trigger that keeps an agent alive between external events — the agent wakes on a schedule (e.g. every 15 minutes), checks its inbox/calendar/queues, and acts if anything changed. In OpenClaw it is a system-owned automation whose cadence is set under agents.defaults.heartbeat (default every 30 minutes); the old HEARTBEAT.md file is retired and no longer read.
See also
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