Between your morning briefing and evening shutdown, a lot can happen. Critical alerts fire. Deadlines creep closer. A follow-up you promised on Monday still hasn't been sent.
System Heartbeat is a task template that runs every hour. Not to scan a fixed checklist, but to think ahead on your behalf. It recalls what's on your plate, reasons about what matters right now, and only notifies you when something genuinely needs your attention.
How it works
Every hour, the Heartbeat follows a reasoning-driven sequence:
- Recall. Pulls active threads, commitments, and upcoming events from your recent conversations.
- Reason. Thinks about what's approaching, what's overdue, what's gone stale, and what connects across domains.
- Investigate. Checks only the tools and services its reasoning identified as relevant.
- Prepare. Gathers supporting info (contacts, booking refs, project context) so it's ready before you ask.
- Prioritize. Re-evaluates previously reported items by urgency, not just "already mentioned."
- Decide. Notifies you if something needs attention, stays silent if not.
The key shift is that instead of running the same checklist every hour, the Heartbeat decides what to check based on what's actually happening in your life.
What it catches
Here are some real examples from our own usage (details changed):
Connecting dots you'd miss
You mentioned following up with Anna about the partnership proposal on Monday. It's now Wednesday and no email has been sent. She also has a calendar invite with you on Friday — might be worth reaching out before then.
The Heartbeat recalled a commitment from conversation, checked Gmail, noticed the gap, and connected it to an upcoming meeting.
Production alerts that need immediate attention
Work (Sentry Alerts): Critical database connection errors identified for core-api in production.
Issues: ConnectionDoesNotExistError and Connection refused (Errno 111) affecting the RDS cluster.
Impacted Customers: Acme Corp and HealthCheck Inc.
Details: Alerts involve /spans, /api/v1/billing/usage, and /knowledge/{id}/add. [View Sentry]
This surfaced through a work email check. A Sentry alert that would have sat unread for hours.
Preparing before you ask
Your flight to Berlin is tomorrow at 14:20. Booking ref: ABC123. Hotel: The Circus, Rosenthaler Str. 1. Your calendar shows a 13:00 meeting that would conflict with getting to the airport. You may want to reschedule or join remotely.
Travel was mentioned in a previous conversation. The Heartbeat retrieved the details and flagged the calendar conflict without being asked.
Make it yours
Add the System Heartbeat from Task Templates in the tasks page. It works out of the box, reasoning about whatever your agent already knows from conversations and connected services.
To extend it, other tasks can register standing checks at the bottom of the template. For example, a "Monitor competitor pricing" task could add a standing check that the Heartbeat always includes, regardless of what its reasoning surfaces.
The philosophy
A fixed checklist runs the same scan whether you're on vacation or in the middle of a product launch. A reasoning-driven heartbeat adapts to what's actually happening. It thinks ahead, connects dots across domains, and prepares information before you need it.
No news is still good news. But when there is news, it's the right news at the right time.